Microsoft is leaving no stone unturned and doing all within its reach to increase the number of Windows 8 applications on the App store. To achieve this Microsoft has introduced Analytics Reports for monitoring the performance of your app on the App store. In its latest post on the Windows Store blog site, authored by Antoine Leblond of Microsoft, discussed the ways in which Metro app developers will be able to monitor the performance and sale of their apps.

Once your app has been published on the app store, you will be able to view its performance in the form of data such as the total number of downloads since its been published and ratings given to the app.This data is updated every 24-36 hours which makes sure you get up-to-date information.You will see a dialog as shown below:

On clicking  the Reports link at the bottom right corner of the dialog shown above it will open up the app summary page that summarizes the key data-points for that app. The App summary page is designed by Microsoft to provide you a quick overview of how your app has been doing over the last 30 days. The app summary page shows you download trends, ratings breakdown, and quality overview for this app. Here’s an example:

The Listing views by referrer chart helps you track referral sources for your apps. It displays the top five sources from where users have landed on the app listing page.

The Usage report helps you understand the amount of time users are spending on your app per day and compare that against the average usage for the subcategory your app belongs to.

Analytics Reports have been designed to include a lot of reports that will allow you to not only refine and improve the sales and downloads of existing apps, but also to determine what types of apps to consider building next. Microsoft has also promised to keep on improving the analytics so that developers can better understand the trends and better market their apps.

Source: Microsoft