Google Analytics was made to monitor your website traffic but many other uses were emerged as developers loved this free data collection and reporting platform.
How can you connect your desktop application to Google Analytics and get application analytics for free? (As you do on your website)
We prepared several preconfigured dashboards for your application usage analytics that you can immediatelly use as soon as you release your software with our SoftMeter application analytics library.
With SoftMeter you can send usage information from your Windows, MacOS or IOS software to Google Analytics or Matomo/Piwik.
This table summarizes which Google Analytics and Matomo/Piwik (beta) fields get populated by the SoftMeter data fields.
A summary of the limits of the free Google Analytics accounts.
SoftMeter uses Google Analytics as its reporting platform.
SoftMeter is a small application analytics library for Windows and MacOS, that links together two great software systems:
How does SoftMeter work?
You are probably already using website statistics to see how many visitors you have on your website and how they use your website.
As software developers for desktop software, we monitor how visitors arrive at our website, which pages they visit the most, which are the entry and exit pages. We also measure the number our software was downloaded. And then, after the download, there is silence: We do not know if the user installed the software if he/she keeps using it or he/she abandoned it the next day. We do not know how many active users we have. Software usage analytics is the category of tools that can help throw light in these questions that every developer has.
Application analytics is the new tool that allows you to look into these matters for the first time.
Our desktop software analytics library (SoftMeter) allows you to monitor your software program's exceptions by sending them automatically to Google Analytics.
It's time you see some instalaltion analytics for your shareware or other types of desktop software.
With SoftMeter, you can monitor your software's distribution and installation analytics using InnoSetup, and Google Analytics. A free and easy to implement solution.
Website vs Mobile App types of reporting views in Google Analytics, and the measurement protocol.
The Google measurement protocol can send PageViews, ScreenViews and Events to your Google Analytics account.
See a comparison listing the similarities and differences between the two types of reporting views: Website vs Mobile App.
The "Mobile App" view type is a relatively new view type in Google Analytics. It is used to track usage statistics of mobile (IOS, Android) apps, while with the help our libAppTelemetry, it can also track usage analytics of desktop (Windows, Mac OS) software.
The SoftMeter library for desktop software sends real-time hits from your desktop software to Google Analytics.
There are two ways to monitor more than one software products via the same Google Analytics property.
By using SoftMeter in your shareware/software application you can see runtime statistics of your desktop program via the Google Analytics platform.
As a shareware developer, you are probably already using Google analytics for your website traffic as it is a free and reliable solution. With our SoftMeter library, you can now also monitor the usage of your software program.
In this article, you can see examples of the reports that you will get.
