Introduction

Welcome to Week 10 of Learning Mixpanel. I'm Ansh, a Mixpanel Certified Partner. I’ve had the privilege of working with 60+ startups, helping them set up their analytics infrastructure and gain actionable insights using Mixpanel.

Curious about my work? Check out my website for case studies, testimonials, and more details about what I do.

Today, I’m going to talk about how to create an analytics strategy for your product.

Let’s get into it

Creating an analytics strategy

If your preferred consumption is audio visual - access the video on Youtube.

An analytics strategy is a list of metrics that help you understand how users interact with your product. It allows you to figure out whatʼs working, what isnʼt, develop hypotheses, and dive deeper into the data.

The goal is to build a story around how users are using your product.

The key part of an analytics strategy is the metrics. Tracking the right, actionable metrics is crucial for making data-driven decisions and driving your product to success.

Goal of metrics

• Convey an easy-to-understand story about your product in just a few minutes
• Show whatʼs working and whatʼs not.
• Help you spot gaps and form hypotheses for improvements.

How to Create an Analytics Strategy in 3 Steps

Break Down Your Product

Donʼt try to analyze your entire product at once. Break it down into smaller parts. You can use the AAARRR funnel Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue) or segment it by features.

Analyzing the whole product without breaking it down can cause you to miss important user behavior insights.

Design metrics

Resist the urge to track every possible metric. For each metric, ask:

• What decision will this metric help inform?
• How does it improve understanding of user behavior, and is it actionable?

If a metric doesnʼt offer clear insights or actionable data, itʼs probably a vanity metric and should be excluded.

• Vanity Metric The total number of products viewed in a week. While interesting, it doesnʼt directly lead to actionable decisions.
• Actionable Metric The number of products viewed before adding an item to the cart. This helps optimize the user journey.

Avoid Going Too Deep

Itʼs tempting to track tons of metrics for a detailed understanding of the product, but this can overwhelm you and lead to confusion.

Instead, focus on the most impactful metrics to get a clear view of your product.

Start by tracking broad metrics that provide a general understanding, then gradually dive deeper into specific areas as needed.

Mixpanel learning course

Every week, I’m going to talk about one topic from Mixpanel. If you’d like to access everything at once, take a look at my course on Mixpanel.

The course is a comprehensive deep dive into Mixpanel, covering each feature with relevant, practical examples.

By the end of the course, you'll become a Mixpanel expert—equipped with the knowledge and confidence to navigate and use the platform like a pro.

Having worked with 60+ startups, I’ve structured this course to focus on what actually gets used in Mixpanel and how.

Each chapter includes a video tutorial and a written document (with visuals) so you can choose the learning format that suits you best—video, text, or both!