Events, Properties, and Parameters
Data in Facebook Analytics is driven by App Events and User Properties. Events are used to describe user activity in your application whilst user properties can be assigned to users to support better segmentation.
For example, in a Travel website and application you might fire a ‘Search’ event whenever a person uses your search function. This event can be enriched with parameters of your choosing, such as ‘Search Type’ which might be ‘Flight’, ‘Hotel’, or ‘Car’. This data and event stream can be used to see trends in search usage over time and, combined with segmentation could be used, to understand the demographics of users who use your search function frequently or use a specific search type frequently.
You can also assign attributes to your users with User Properties which can be used in segmentation. App Events describe something a user did, where properties describe an attribute of the user. For example, their Frequent Flyer Status might be Gold, or they may have been a Member Since 2012. User properties can be set from your app or website using the SDK or using our server-to-server API, which is a great way to leverage your CRM data with Facebook Analytics.
Facebook Analytics has many reports that can help you better understand your customers and their behavior, including:
Funnels – Funnels allow you to monitor people’s journey’s through your experiences – whether that’s an e-commerce checkout experience, registration or sign up process, or how far people make it through your New User Experience (NUX). Funnels are the best way to identify where you should spend your resources and optimize your app.
Cohorts – After acquisition, retention is the other half of the growth equation. Cohorts are the way to understand how well you’re retaining your users and, more importantly, how changes to your app are affecting that retention. With Facebook Analytics behavioral cohorts, we can even look at how changes to your app affect Lifetime Value (LTV) or any other event you care about.
Segments – To really understand your users you need to zoom and understand different audiences. Whether that’s seeing the demographics of your top performing customers by value or seeing how well a particular demographic converts in your funnels – segmentation is supported on most reports in Facebook Analytics.
People, Not Devices
All reports provide an omni-channel view of user activity by default as we believe that to really understand customer behavior you must understand the person and not their devices. Omni-channel analytics makes it easy to monitor activity across devices and get a complete view of the customer journey.
