by Brian Swift, Product Manager

When we launched Answers last July, our goal was to build a mobile analytics solution that you didn’t need to analyze. Now processing more than 150 billion sessions per month, we’ve heard a number of requests for additional functionality and seen an overwhelming demand for the ability to track specific events within your apps.

Today, we’re pleased to announce our opening of Answers Labs and our first Labs project, custom events, now in public beta. At Answers Labs, we’re always experimenting with new ideas and projects to make mobile analytics ever simpler.

Often, developers don't have enough visibility into how users are engaging with their apps, let alone getting actionable information. Our first Answers Labs project lets you track specific user actions so you can see exactly how users are behaving within your app, in real time. But this only scratches the surface of what we think custom events should do. If you're a content publisher and retention suddenly drops, is it because fewer articles are read overall, or is the number of articles consumed per user decreasing? If fewer articles are read, is it a single topic that has declined, or all of them?

With custom events, you'll have total visibility into how users are engaging with your app. No matter what business you’re in, you’ll know exactly where to focus your efforts to improve your app experience.

We’ve been privately testing this tool with the biggest and most varied apps out there. Now, we’re ready to open up the beta to more of you. To join the custom events public beta, sign up for Answers Labs!