14 DAY TRIAL // Developers wanting to know what’s going on with their Mac apps, after being accepted within the confines of the elusive Mac App Store, can enlist the help of Tapstream, a tool built by app developers, for app developers.
“The Mac App Store had a slow start early in 2011, but it didn’t take long for it to become the primary way Mac users buy desktop software,” says Tapstream.
Tapstream is a company that takes pride in offering tools that enable developers to understand how users find and use their apps.
If your app is in the Mac App Store, Apple restricts this information: “Unfortunately for Mac developers, with all the conveniences that come with the App Store they had to give up something very valuable: their sales data,” the metrics / analytics company adds.
Tapstream elaborates, noting on its blog that “…software transactions in the Mac App Store happen completely behind closed doors.”
“This prevents developers from knowing some simple facts about their users, like how they found the app, which social channel (if any) they came from, or which of the paid marketing campaigns drove them to buy it,” the firm explains.
This is where the new Tapstream for Mac comes into play and allows developers to regain control. Using a two-step integration, “Mac app developers can get solid data from the Mac App Store,” Tapstream promises.
According to the company’s blog, the first step is to drop a snippet of JavaScript into your site’s header, and the second step is to add the Mac SDK into your app.
Don’t worry though, Tapstream assures developers that the kit is lightweight; therefore, it won’t add too many extra megabytes to the binary making its way back into the Mac App Store.
Tapstream is completely free to use for most developers, according to the company.
The service doesn’t rely on mobile ad networks, cookies or UDIDs, but rather it fingerprints web visitors with specialized software to match them up with conversions that developers define inside their app.