Facebook Cookbook - Jay Goldman [166]
Application-specific engagement (for a gaming app, this could be how often a user performs a specific game action)
Social engagement, which is a count of the number of Facebook channels used by users who already have the application installed
Optimizing for both types of metrics will result in the user performing the desired actions on your site (application-specific engagement), or re-engaging other app users, in turn generating more active users of your application (social engagement).
How to measure
So, how does one actually go about acquiring these metrics? The first step should be to instrument your application with Google Analytics. Though Google Analytics is really designed for the broad Web, it gives you basic information about the overall health of your Facebook app by providing you the page view count and average session time, as well as other basic metrics.
To calculate and tune the k-factor, there are a couple of possible approaches. One is to query your application data to mine for these metrics. This may seem relatively simple to do, but as your applications grow larger, the queries will become slower and start to interfere with the performance of your app. Therefore, it is not a recommended long-term solution, but it is a good starting point. The alternative is to use third-party software, such as the Kontagent analytics suite, to collect and process this data for you. It generally takes a few hours to instrument your existing application, but the result provides you deep social analytics, much like Google Analytics, tailored for social networks. Kontagent analytics provide you with virality rates, conversion, and deep metrics on all your communication channels, as well as metrics that correlate user characteristics with social behavior. You can find more information at http://www.kontagent.com.
Work the Integration Points
Problem
I don’t really have a budget to spend on advertising my app to attract users. Is there anything I can do on-Facebook?
Solution
Work the integration points like there’s no tomorrow. See Facebook Platform Integration Points for more information about the different points and how best to use them.
Discussion
Spreading through the social graph is still the most powerful mechanism for attracting users because those users tend to be much higher-value (they are drawn to your app because their friends use it, rather than because they come across it in an ad). Experiment aggressively during the early days of your app to figure out what works as content in invitations, requests, message attachments, etc., and then make sure you don’t get lazy and allow competitors to bypass you on any one of the points. As with the different ad networks, make sure you’re measuring your success at the different points so that you can quickly adjust if things aren’t panning out (see Measuring Your Success).
Continuous Improvement Through A/B Testing
Problem
I want to continuously improve my ability to attract new users, but I don’t know how to keep evaluating what’s working.
Solution
A/B testing comes from the world of hi-fidelity audio systems, in which people stand in neutral rooms and toggle back and forth between the “A” and “B” speakers connected to an amplifier, to decide whether they should buy the ones that cost twice as much as your mortgage or the ones that are more expensive than a university education. Luckily for you, A/B testing isn’t just for audiophiles anymore! The same principle can be applied to web or Facebook apps: develop “A” and “B” alternatives, show “A” to a test group and “B” to another test group, and see which one is better at a predefined metric. You might, for example, try different invite texts to see which attracts users faster or at a higher response rate.
Discussion
Implementing your own A/B test framework is doable, but that