As of 2019, an estimated 2 million apps actively use Firebase every month, and now over 2.5 million monthly active apps are using it for backend services, which include global businesses like Gameloft, Alibaba, The New York Times, The Economist, Todoist as well as innovative startups like Classkick.

Firebase has been very valuable in helping a lot of businesses scale up as their customer base grows online, especially for eCommerce businesses whose websites deal with a lot of data on backend servers. This will require a resilient and solid storage architecture for the database, one of the services that Firebase provides.

A month ago Firebase Summit 2020 was held virtually, it is a yearly event where updates are shared on how to accelerate your app development, run your app efficiently, and tailor Firebase to suit your needs among other things.

Firebase partnered with Stripe to release the Send Invoice Using Stripe and Run Subscription Payments with Stripe extensions. These extensions let you integrate the Stripe payments platform with Firebase without the need for your website developer to learn Stripe API. The extensions are great tools for particularly eCommerce websites that make use of Stripe to receive online payments from customers online or businesses conducting online business transactions with their clients.

• Send Invoice Using Stripe extension — This extension is used to create and send customizable customer invoices with your brand identity using the Stripe payments platform. The invoices are automatically customized with the logo and colour theme of your business brand set up in Stripe. Once the invite is sent, you can use the Stripe dashboard to track whether the customer has paid.
• Run Subscription Payments with Stripe extension — This extension makes it possible to manage access control for platform content via Firebase Authentication. Your users can sign up for digital products and paid content with Stripe Checkout and manage their subscriptions with the Stripe customer portal. The Stripe Checkout and customer portal can be customized in your Stripe Dashboard according to your business guidelines. This extension will serve websites with premium content that needs a customer to pay before unlocking the full version of your website’s content.

Another amazing extension that will be highly beneficial to businesses is the Detect Online Presence extension which shows you which users or devices are currently online, then the data will be stored in Cloud Firestore (another great tool). It will serve businesses with online dating mobile apps like Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid and others, also gaming and social apps which will ensure an improved experience for your app users, it will allow users to know when their friends are online for a friendly chat or match.

Analytics

Google Firebase makes it possible for businesses to track response time from different networks that users might be using, and performance issues like app startup time. If you use the Google Analytics tool for your business website to study user behaviour on your site, then you should not have any problems getting acquainted with the Firebase Performance Monitoring feature, it allows you to gain insight into your app’s performance. This feature will serve mostly businesses that develop consumer products to improve people’s lives and websites that sell things online like eCommerce. One of the best ways to add value to your users will be to understand their point of view on how your app performs so that you can adjust accordingly, allowing your users to have a fast, high-quality experience. Firebase Performance Monitoring makes it easier to bring the metrics you care about to the forefront.

Ecommerce Measurement

First of all, to enjoy this feature, Google Analytics needs to be enabled in your Firebase project or upgraded to Google Analytics if you haven’t already. Google Analytics collects usage and behaviour data for your app. Ecommerce measurement requires you to link your Firebase project to an Analytics account.

The eCommerce measurement feature allows measurement of user interactions with products across users’ shopping experience, including interactions such as product list view, product list clicks, viewing product details, adding or removing a product to the shopping, initiating the checkout process, purchasing a product, and customer refunds.

Ecommerce measurement also includes support for measuring impressions and clicks of internal promotions, such as banners displayed to promote a product sale.

App Stability and Usability

Firebase App Distribution makes it easy for you to distribute pre-release versions of your mobile or web apps to trusted testers. This prevents a scenario where once your app goes live, bugs start popping up which is unavoidable and this can hurt your user’s experience of the app or your ratings and reviews on the Google Play Store for a mobile app. Firebase App Distribution makes it possible to address this type of eventuality before your users start interacting with the app.

Optimize Customer Engagement

Firebase In-App Messaging feature helps improve your relationship with your users, further building trust in the process by engaging users who are actively using your app by sending them targeted and contextual messages that motivate them to complete key in-app actions like buying an item or subscribing to content.

In-App Messaging also integrates with Analytics and Predictions to give you the ability to send messages to users based on the actions that they have taken on your app and their interests, this targeting capability works kind of like Google Display Ads.

The In-App messages design can be tailored to match your business brand so that your users can have a native experience with your app. Integration with Analytics will make it easier to track the performance of each messaging campaign for impressions, clicks, and conversions so that you can make informed decisions for your business.

Conclusion

Firebase will keep being a valuable player in the tech industry for businesses that plan to grow and for developers to make their work very much easy. With Google having the yearly Firebase Summit, this means more valuable features will be added and upgraded that help businesses engage with their customers better and provide them with the most optimal user experience possible.