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The main product I work on does not use google analytics, but we do use mixpanel to see what our paid users are actually doing with the SaaS. We actually don't
by bonestamp2 6y ago
The main product I work on does not use google analytics, but we do use mixpanel to see what our paid users are actually doing with the SaaS. We actually don't care who each user is, we just want the aggregate data. We believe this data is important for retaining paid subscriptions and attracting new ones. Let me explain.
There's one feature that 100% of our subscribers use. I mean, it's the main thing we do and everyone who subscribes needs that function. Even without analytics, we know that we have to continually make that feature faster and smarter to stay ahead of our competition. We know that if we fall behind our competitors, our subscriptions will dwindle.
But, then we have a bunch of other features that help customers solve some edge case problems around that main thing. It's very important for us to know which of those functions are being tried, used, and reused (or not). Not all customers use these features, but some are tools we have that nobody else in our space does. So, having insights on which ones are getting traction and which ones need improvement help us spend our marketing and engineering time better to attract new customers and retain our existing ones.
I can't imagine not having any analytics. I feel like we need them to continually make small course corrections that ensure we're providing the best value to our existing customers.
- GordonS 6y ago> We actually don't care who each user is, we just want the aggregate data. > It's very important for us to know which of those functions are being tried, used, and reused (or not) Aren't these 2 at odds with each other, or else how can you tell when the same person re-uses a feature? Surely you need some kind of user identifier for that?
- bonestamp2 6y agoYes, good point, I should have been more clear. You're right that we track unique users, but we do so in abstract. I suppose with some work we could pull together enough data from different sources to determine who a particular user was in a particular session. I just meant that we don't do that and it's not easy for us to do that because we don't care about that type of data. We only care about what each abstract user does in the sense that we want to know the aggregate of how many users did that thing. Additionally, unlike google analytics, we do support the browser's "do not track" flag. So if a user doesn't want to be tracked at all, we completely respect that.