product-analytics

Product Analytics

Core Principles

• Metrics over vanity — Focus on actionable metrics tied to business outcomes
• Data-driven decisions — Hypothesize, measure, learn, iterate
• User-centric measurement — Track behavior, not just pageviews
• Statistical rigor — Understand significance, avoid false positives
• Privacy-first — Respect user data, comply with GDPR/CCPA
• North Star focus — Align all teams around one key metric

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Hard Rules (Must Follow)

These rules are mandatory. Violating them means the skill is not working correctly.

No PII in Events

Events must NEVER contain personally identifiable information.

// ❌ FORBIDDEN: PII in event properties
track('user_signed_up', {
  email: '[email protected]',     // PII!
  name: 'John Doe',              // PII!
  phone: '+1234567890',          // PII!
  ip_address: '192.168.1.1',     // PII!
  credit_card: '4111...',        // NEVER!
});

// ✅ REQUIRED: Anonymized/hashed identifiers only
track('user_signed_up', {
  user_id: hash('[email protected]'),  // Hashed
  plan: 'pro',
  source: 'organic',
  country: 'US',                       // Broad location OK
});

// Masking utilities
const maskEmail = (email) => {
  const [name, domain] = email.split('@');
  return `${name[0]}***@${domain}`;
};

Object_Action Event Naming

All event names must follow the object_action snake_case format.

// ❌ FORBIDDEN: Inconsistent naming
track('signup');                    // No object
track('newProject');                // camelCase
track('Upload File');               // Spaces and PascalCase
track('user-created');              // kebab-case
track('BUTTON_CLICKED');            // SCREAMING_CASE

// ✅ REQUIRED: object_action snake_case
track('user_signed_up');
track('project_created');
track('file_uploaded');
track('payment_completed');
track('checkout_started');

Actionable Metrics Only

Track metrics that drive decisions, not vanity metrics.