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Trustworthy data

The tracking plan, verifying what ships, keeping it accurate six months on, and the two things that quietly corrupt every per-user number you have.

  1. 08How to create a tracking plan before anyone writes codeA tracking plan is one sheet that contains every event you want to track and the properties that go on each event. Write it before anyone writes code, give it one owner who is not a developer, and that's your source of truth.6 min read
  2. 09Event verification: how to QA tracking before you trust itAfter your team ships event changes, somebody has to check that what's arriving in your analytics tool is what you asked for. Verification runs after implementation and before anyone uses the data, in three layers: what fired, whether what fired is right, and whether every surface was checked.5 min read
  3. 10Data accuracy as a system: keeping numbers rightVerifying an event tells you it worked that day. Staying accurate takes three habits: alerts on events and properties, new-event checks, database checks. The three run on their own, so you find out what your data is doing without going looking for it. Alerts catch problems as they happen, verification catches new events that were never checked, and the database check catches a gap that suddenly widens.3 min read
  4. 11Analytics data loss: why you're missing 15-20% of eventsIf your tracking runs entirely in the browser, ad blockers take at least 15 to 20%. Route through your own domain and send core events from your backend. If your users are technical, developers and designers and anyone who lives in a browser with an ad blocker running, the loss is worse than that.3 min read
  5. 12Identity stitching: why your user counts don't matchYour analytics tool counts one person as several until you call identify at login and signup. Get it wrong and every per-user number is wrong with it. Call identify with your own internal user ID, and only after the user has authenticated.4 min read
  6. 13MMP vs UTM tracking: knowing where users came fromIf your product is web only, UTM tags on every link are enough. The moment you have a mobile app, UTMs break at the install and you need an MMP. If you have both a website and an app, use the MMP for every link, so one system tells you where each user came from.6 min read