Analytics Event Design

One of the most important things you can do to ensure that your product analytics is effective is to design your analytics events correctly.

In this chapter, we will discuss the key principles of event design and how you can use them to create an effective event tracking strategy for your product.

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What are Analytics Events?

Analytics events are user interactions with your product that you track using an analytics tool. These events can be anything from clicking a button to making a purchase.

Events are the building blocks of your product analytics. By tracking events, you can understand how users are interacting with your product, identify areas for improvement, and measure the impact of changes you make to your product.

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Which Events to Track?

When deciding which events to track, there are two key principles you should keep in mind:

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1. Be Relevant

Events should be relevant to your business goals. This means that you should only track events that are meaningful to your product and your users. For example, if you’re building an e-commerce platform, you should track events like “product_added_to_cart” and “purchase_completed”, but you don’t need to track events like “page_scrolled” or “item_hovered”.

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2. Be Actionable

Events should be actionable, meaning that they should provide you with information that you can act on. For example, if you track an event like “signup_button_clicked”, you can use this information to optimize your signup flow and increase the number of signups.

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Event Design Principles

When designing events for your product analytics, there are a few key principles you should keep in mind to ensure that your events are effective and useful.

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Event Names

When naming events, use a consistent naming convention to make it easier to analyze and compare events.

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Use snake_case

You should use snake_case to name your events. This means that you should use lowercase letters and separate words with underscores. For example, you should name an event like “product_viewed” instead of “ProductViewed”.

In the larger scheme of things, it doesn’t matter which case convention you use as long as you’re consistent.

I recommend using snake_case because I’ve found it to be readable, easy to type, and easy to work with in most analytics tools and SQL queries.

Examples

Good:

• product_viewed
• purchase_completed

Bad:

• ProductViewed
• Purchase Completed

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Use a noun-verb format

When naming events, use a noun-verb format to make it clear what the event represents. Here, the noun represents the object or entity that the event is related to, and the verb represents the action in past tense.

In case of complex verbs like “Add to cart”, you can use a noun-verb-noun format, where the first noun represents the subject of the action, the verb represents the action, and the second noun serves as a qualifier or descriptor.

Examples

Good:

• product_viewed
• purchase_completed
• product_added_to_cart

Bad:

• view_product
• completed_purchase
• add_product_to_cart

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Use descriptive names

When naming events, use descriptive names that clearly convey the meaning of the event. This will make it easier for you and your team to understand what the event represents and how it should be used.

Examples

Good:

• product_viewed
• purchase_completed
• product_added_to_cart

Bad:

• view
• click
• add_to_cart

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Event Properties

Properties are key-value pairs that provide additional information about the event. For example, you can include properties like “product_id” or “category” with a “product_viewed” event to track which product was viewed.

Properties should be structured and consistent across events. As a general principle, while an event tells you what action was performed, your properties should be able to help you identify the following about an event:

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Object

The object that the event is related to. For example, in a “product_viewed” event, the object would be the product that was viewed. You should include the identifier of the object as a property, as well as any other categories or attributes that help describe the object.

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Location

The location where the event occurred. This could be one or more properties based on the nature of your product. You should be able to identify the page or screen where the event occurred, as well as the position within the page or screen if relevant.

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Context & Platform

The context in which the event occurred. This could include information like the user’s device, browser, or operating system, app version, as well as any other contextual information that might be relevant to the event.

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Footnote: Keep it Simple

While it’s important to design a tracking plan that’s comprehensive and covers all the cases you need, it’s also important to keep it simple. The more complex your tracking plan is, the harder it will be to maintain and as your company scales.

Remember that whatever event structure you create will have to be taught to new team members constantly, and they’ll pass this knowledge on to subsequent team members. So, it’s important to keep it simple, easy to understand and not overly complex.