Product Analytics

Measure what matters and make data-driven decisions.

North Star Metric

The ONE metric that represents customer value

Examples: Slack: Weekly Active Users Airbnb: Nights Booked Spotify: Time Listening Shopify: GMV

Your North Star should: ✅ Represent customer value ✅ Correlate with revenue ✅ Be measurable frequently ✅ Rally the team

Key Metrics Hierarchy

North Star Metric ├── Input Metrics (drive North Star) │ ├── Acquisition │ ├── Activation │ └── Retention └── KPIs (business health) ├── Revenue ├── Churn └── LTV

Event Tracking

// Track user actions analytics.track('Button Clicked', { button_name: 'signup', page: 'homepage', user_id: '123' })

// Track page views analytics.page('Homepage', { referrer: document.referrer, path: window.location.pathname })

// Identify users analytics.identify('user-123', { email: 'user@example.com', plan: 'pro', created_at: '2024-01-15' })

Funnel Analysis

Sign-up Funnel:

1. Land on homepage: 10,000 (100%)
2. Click signup: 2,000 (20%)
3. Fill form: 1,000 (10%)
4. Verify email: 800 (8%)
5. Complete onboarding: 400 (4%)

Insights:

• Biggest drop: Homepage to signup (80% lost)
• Fix: Clarify value prop, add social proof

Cohort Analysis

Week 1 Cohort (Jan 1-7):

• D1: 80% active
• D7: 40% active
• D30: 20% active

Week 2 Cohort (Jan 8-14):

• D1: 85% active (+5%)
• D7: 50% active (+10%)
• D30: 30% active (+10%)

Insight: Onboarding changes improved retention!

Retention Curves

Good Retention:

• D1: 60-80%
• D7: 40-60%
• D30: 30-50%
• Flattening curve (good!)

Bad Retention:

• D1: 40%
• D7: 10%
• D30: 2%
• Steep drop-off (bad!)

Key Metrics to Track

Acquisition

• Traffic sources (organic, paid, referral)

• Cost per click (CPC)

• Conversion rate (visitor → signup)

Activation

• Signup → first core action

• Time to value

• Onboarding completion rate

Retention

• DAU / MAU (stickiness)

• Retention rate D1, D7, D30

• Churn rate

Revenue

• MRR / ARR

• ARPU (Average Revenue Per User)

• LTV (Lifetime Value)

• LTV:CAC ratio

Referral

• Viral coefficient

• Referral signups

• NPS (Net Promoter Score)

Tools

Event Tracking:
  - Mixpanel (best for products)
  - Amplitude (good alternative)
  - PostHog (open-source)

Session Recording:
  - FullStory
  - LogRocket
  - Hotjar

A/B Testing:
  - Optimizely
  - VWO
  - Google Optimize (free)

Dashboard Design

Executive Dashboard:
  - North Star Metric (big number)
  - Revenue (MRR/ARR)
  - Key metric trends (graphs)

Product Dashboard:
  - Active users (DAU/WAU/MAU)
  - Feature usage
  - Retention cohorts
  - Funnels

Marketing Dashboard:
  - Traffic sources
  - Conversion rates
  - Cost per acquisition
  - ROI by channel

Summary

Great analytics:

- ✅ One North Star Metric

- ✅ Track everything

- ✅ Regular review (weekly)

- ✅ Share insights widely

- ✅ Act on data quickly