iOS Google Analytics SDK - weird session length

Question

I can't seem to understand these following stats from google analytics engagement behavior loyalty:

This indicates, that the average first session length is 24s, and out of the 42,530 user's 40,289 continued to a second session of average length 4m46s. The app has a signup process, so the 4m46s does not surprise me, but it should have been in the first session..

I'm pretty sure there is something faulty with the stats. I think i'm starting the session correctly in didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:

//google anlytics
[GAI sharedInstance].trackUncaughtExceptions = YES;
[GAI sharedInstance].dispatchInterval = 20;
id<GAITracker> tracker = [[GAI sharedInstance] trackerWithTrackingId:[[NSBundle mainBundle] objectForInfoDictionaryKey:@"GAIKey"]];
[tracker sendEventWithCategory:@"some-category" withAction:@"some-action" withLabel:@"some-label" withValue:@0];

I really don't understand these numbers, they don't comply with my other logs, feedbacks, and flurry stats.

Is anybody familiar with this?

EDIT - ADDED GOOGLE ANALYTICS DEBUG MODE LOGS SCREENSHOT - note: this was logged during one session in the simulator which included the signup process.

Answer 1

Read this post please:

http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/06/29/google-analytics-mobile-app-tracking-data-and-reports/

Engagement metrics and outcome metrics in mobile SDK are similar to web tracking, but they've been adjusted for a mobile app world. Instead of Pageviews we have screenviews. Instead of avg time on site we have avg session duration and instead of pages/visit we have screens / session.

Answer 2

I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to app analytics, but here is an educated guess:

If this is anything like funnel visualization/tracking (which is what I assume when you say sign-up form), I would have to think that there is some additional first step/session that may last around 4 seconds, and then periodic dispatch adds 20s to that metric.

Maybe setting dispatch to 0 could at least troubleshoot if that is somehow a factor.

Are you using automated session management?

google analytics ios sdk V2.0 short session durations :

The app starts a session on startup, and also when the screensaver is dismissed by a touch.

One question that boggles me, is how you're only losing 2,000 users when confronted with a 4m sign-up form. That would be a deal breaker on an eCommerce site.

hopefully this goes without saying:

Testing and Debugging

The Google Analytics SDK for iOS provides a debug mode that will print useful information about what data is being sent to Google Analytics in your logs.

// Enable debug mode. [GAI sharedInstance].debug = YES;

I would also investigate further if you really are starting the session correctly with didFinishLaunchingWithOptions.

Answer 3

Without direct acccess to your data, this is speculation, but I think that this could be is related to your sessions having a high bounce rate (meaning they are sessions that only have 1 hit). Google Analytics treats bounces as being visits that took 0 seconds.

Can you check: what's the bounce rate for first time visitors? If it's very high, then that 0:24 is because it's being weighted down heavily by 0:00 instances.

The fact that it isn't affecting the 2nd session indicates that it might be a tracking configuration issue; is it possible that your tracking is mistakenly causing some large percent of first sessions to break into a second session, thus inflating your return visitor count and making your first visit data look very bad?

Answer 4

According to the Google Analytics documentation , the default session length is 30 seconds. I wonder if your users are pausing for some reason, and then proceeding to whatever the next action you're tracking is. Perhaps you can increase the session timeout to validate that is/is not what's causing the odd numbers.

Here's the code from the docs:

[tracker setSessionTimeout:60];

Answer 5

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/analytics

There's also a link somewhere on the Adwords support website that allows you to instead contact Analytics support staff directly. They've helped me implement very large scale solutions many times, and usually respond within 12-24 hours. I would highly advise that you reach out to them, and share as much as possible about the problem to get the best response. There's only so much we can do with a limited amount of information.

Not on home computer now, but if you need help finding the link let me know.