I love numbers and data. Especially when it has to do with studying growth patterns and performance. Over the years, we have all relied on Google Analytics to study how well our apps were being used. This gave us lots of insight and we all thought we could understand the use patterns of our apps with this tool. Well, we were right but then, it was mostly because we did not know anything could work better. To track custom patterns some of us built in-house analytics tools and spent time writing codes instead of growing our apps.
Understanding your users is key to success, communicating with them is also very important. I can’t even begin to mention the various live chat plugins out there. They are behemoth. They worked for most of us but not me. I always wanted more and would spend time hacking together my own stats dashboard. I built some interesting stuff that solved big problems but still did not satisfy my hunger! Well looks like there were people like me out there! It’s the guys over at http://intercom.io.
Intercom is analytics on steroids. The first day I came across it, I wondered what this stuff could do for me and was reluctant to give them my data. So I checked their customers and after seeing that a team like inVision was using their tool I was beyond convinced. Intercom is quite interesting to set up. You export your database into a CSV file and then watch the magic unfold! It’s like unboxing a Christmas present, if you’ve seen HBO’s Silicon Valley, you would know that there are situations when you get aroused just thinking of the kind of code behind some tools out there.
Intercom takes your user data and makes sense out of it for you. After importing your data, you can embed a tiny snippet of code to your app to continuously track your users without having to import databases every time. With Intercom you can see who’s online, who was last online, the number of sessions per user, country, browser information and lots more. You can even create custom segments and track data and stats in variations. Two days into Intercom I became addicted and noticed that I gradually stopped worrying about page views within Google Analytics which does a great job but doesn’t really convert to value for the kind of product I run. The crazy part of Intercom is being able to communicate with your users real time and via email. You can create various segments to know which of your users are loyal or see the ones that are slipping away. You can view trends on what keeps them on the site or what their exit path is! Google Analytics does this but not for individual users and thus makes it feel ghost.
The funny thing about Intercom is how I get to discover new use cases for it daily. I have fallen so in love with this thing that I decided to buy an extra monitor that just shows me Intercom stats (talk about love for data/numbers). If you run a product and want to understand what’s going on with your users then Intercom is for you! Unfortunately, you have to pay for it if you decide to communicate and if you have quite a number of users it can hurt your pocket but it’s worth it if you know what you are doing. And I have no regrets paying for this thing!
Are you using Intercom already? Share your stories. If not I suggest you give it a try.
