How to read an app report without vanity numbers

Builders will offer a chart of opens, sessions, and time. Those numbers feel like progress. They do not tell you whether the app did the job in your brief.

Pick three counts

• Did they reach the fact? Opens of the hours page, the fixture, or the episode, not opens of the home screen.
• Did they come back? People who opened that same page in a later week. A poster can inflate a single day. A return visit means the icon or the link earned a second look.
• Did the path fail? Form submissions that arrived, and form submissions that did not. Map opens that bounced in a second. You need a place that receives the form before this count means anything.

Ignore the rest until those three move

Country charts, device charts, and a total user number are useful later, when you are deciding whether a second language or an Android-only bug is worth a week. In the first season they are a way to avoid editing the page people actually open.

Write the result on the brief

Next to the one-sentence job, note the three counts once a month. If the fact page is never opened, the app is a brochure in a pocket. Fix the path or stop paying to package it.