Tracking plan 101 — Defining your product tracking

Let’s remove some misconceptions first.

1. It’s not a lot of work to define your data

2. If done correctly can have 20 events to cover your whole product

3. It’s not harder or more time consuming then autotracking

So let’s get started.

Side Note: If you want to autotrack then you can do it simply by defining 2 events view and click. In each of the events send the relevant information such as where the click was, what is the click item or even the action of the click and boom.. there you have auto tracking.

Here — Use this script for “auto tracking” to send data to Mixpanel.

But I f you really want to get more then just vanity metrics let’s sit and define what you want to track and get meaningful insights.

Focus Metric  - What matters most to your business. If we improve this number will the product’s long-term performance improve?

Usually we suggest something that ties with active usage such as WAU and MAU.

Or the best way to think of it is your Value Moment + Natural Frequency (example for a video streaming platform would be Weekly Active Subscribers)

Why Focus Metric and not North Star. A single north star can be limiting, and we prefer the softer framing of a focus metric that works in concert with other key performance indicators (KPIs). Also a focus metrics should be the top priority, not the sole priority, and improving the focus metric should not be accomplished at the expense of harming other KPIs.

You can read more on Mixpanel Guide to Product Metrics

Reach  -  Reach is the total number of people who have used the product in a recent time period

Activation  -  Activation is a foundational step that primes a new user to become an active user

Retention - Retention is the metric that shows whether your product has staying power

Engagement  -  Engagement is the frequency and cadence of completing key actions

Active Users  - Active users are people who have taken a key action and received value from your product within a recent time period

So what can I learn from the above to help me build my event tracking?

I’d like to see how I can track Reach. Reach for example in a B2B company might mean the install base or created account.

So now I can define my signup event that is literally tied to my reach KPI and can understand the context with the additional properties sent.

If you need to brainstorm different ways to enrich those events to make them more powerful feel free to drop us a line

Happy Dataing!

Alon