Mastering Event and Screen Tracking for Comprehensive Analytics

Deciphering user behavior has become crucial for both product and marketing teams. Event tracking, a potent tool in the analytics arsenal, offers profound insights. However, the true power of event tracking lies in its implementation and the meticulous planning and standardization of its processes.

A standardized event tracking plan is indispensable for organizations managing a spectrum of products and utilizing diverse analytics destinations such as Google Analytics, Facebook, and AppsFlyer. The absence of a uniform naming convention often leads to a labyrinth of data, making it arduous for teams to navigate through events seamlessly.

Imagine a scenario where various teams and external vendors are involved in setting up event tracking. Without a standardized naming convention, chaos ensues. However, teams can effortlessly locate, analyze, and act upon events with a consistent framework. This streamlines data management and empowers product teams to define custom funnels with precision.

Standardization of Event Names

Navigating the complexities of event tracking requires a delicate equilibrium between robustness and simplicity in crafting a cohesive naming framework. The document encourages the adoption of Segment’s object-action framework, offering a structured and lucid approach to labeling events within the digital landscape. This framework acts as a guiding principle, defining the key “objects” and corresponding “actions” in applications, ensuring a systematic and comprehensible organization of data points.

Yet, the true efficacy of event tracking unfolds when this framework is practically applied, intertwining default events with meticulously tailored custom ones. While Segment’s structure provides a foundation, default events inherent to platforms like Google Analytics and Facebook play a pivotal role by offering pre-defined visualizations and reports. The strategic amalgamation of default and custom events is the linchpin for unlocking the complete potential of event tracking.

Integrating default and custom events transcends a mere technicality; it becomes a strategic dance between structure and adaptability. This synergy amplifies the interpretability of data, empowering teams to delve into the nuances of user behavior. By harmonizing the standardized starting points of default events with the tailored precision of custom events, organizations not only streamline their tracking systems but also unveil a richer narrative that propels them toward a more profound understanding of user engagement and behavior.

Logic for Event Tracking: Default Events and the Object-Action Framework in Action

For a more concrete understanding, let’s explore a practical example. Envision an e-commerce setting where a user engages in the purchase of one or more products. In Google Analytics, this transaction is captured as a default event labeled ‘purchase.’ Meanwhile, adhering to the object-action framework, Facebook designates this action as ‘product_purchased.’ The synergy between default and custom events in this scenario vividly illustrates how a holistic and unified event-tracking system materializes.

This harmonious integration ensures that the user’s purchase activity is comprehensively recorded and standardized, irrespective of the analytics platform. The default events provide a baseline structure, while custom events, aligned with the object-action framework, cater to the unique intricacies of the application. The result is a cohesive tapestry of data that simplifies tracking and enriches the narrative, offering a nuanced understanding of user interactions across diverse platforms.

Example:

GA Default Event: One or more products are purchased by a user
Facebook Default Event: Purchase
Object-Action: Product_purchased

Implementing the Object-Action Framework

At its core, the object-action framework is composed of two fundamental elements: object and action. The “object” embodies the pivotal components within an application, essentially representing the core entities or elements with which users interact. Concurrently, the “action” delineates how users engage with these objects, encapsulating the dynamics of user interactions. The implementation of this framework significantly enhances the clarity of event names, providing a lucid structure for understanding and categorizing user activities within the digital landscape.

As the object-action framework unfolds, it brings a transformative effect to the event-tracking process. Clearly defining objects and actions imparts a systematic organization to the myriad interactions occurring within an application. This not only simplifies the naming of events but also amplifies the effectiveness of the tracking process. Events cease to be mere data points; they metamorphose into discernible narratives that tell the story of user engagement with profound detail.

Consider the application of this framework in practice. Visualize an e-commerce scenario where a user initiates the checkout process. The object-action framework would categorize this interaction as “checkout_begun.” This explicit naming convention clarifies the event’s nature and fosters a more intuitive understanding of user behavior. The object-action framework acts as a linguistic bridge, translating user interactions into a structured language that resonates across various teams and stakeholders, facilitating a more effective and insightful tracking process.

When default events are insufficient, a recommended naming convention is the <object>_<action> pattern. This ensures a systematic approach to custom event names, allowing for consistency across different analytics platforms.

Standardizing Screen Names for Mobile Apps

The intricacies of tracking mobile app performance introduce an added layer of complexity, particularly when managing diverse platforms such as Android and iOS. Navigating through the nuances of user interactions on these distinct operating systems requires a thoughtful data collection and analysis approach. Recognizing this challenge, Google Analytics advocates for consolidating both platforms under a unified property. This strategic alignment allows for a seamless cross-platform comparison, facilitating a more holistic understanding of user behavior across the mobile app landscape.

By consolidating Android and iOS tracking under the same property, organizations gain a panoramic view of their mobile app’s performance. This approach streamlines the analytical process, enabling a comparative analysis of user engagement, feature utilization, and other key metrics. It simplifies data management and empowers businesses to make more informed decisions by considering the overarching trends and patterns that transcend platform-specific idiosyncrasies.

Firebase Analytics’ automatic screen tracking can introduce discrepancies in screen names. To address this, manual screen_view event logging is recommended. This involves disabling automatic screen tracking and developers manually logging a screen_view event on each screen. To ensure actionable data, a consistent naming convention is crucial.

Naming Conventions for Screens

Regarding screen names within the context of mobile applications, their independence from the underlying code necessitates a standardized approach for effective tracking and analysis. Screen names are a crucial aspect of user interaction, providing insights into the specific sections or features within an app that engage the user. Adopting a standardized naming convention becomes imperative to bring order to this diverse landscape of screen interactions. In this pursuit of consistency, adopting a snake cases for screen names emerges as a strategic choice. This naming convention, characterized by all lowercase letters and underscores as separators, aligns seamlessly with the established event naming convention, fostering a sense of uniformity and coherence in the broader framework of data collection and interpretation.

The decision to employ snake case for screen names goes beyond mere stylistic choices; it is a practical solution for maintaining clarity and consistency in data management. This approach ensures that a unified language is employed for categorization and analysis regardless of the multitude of screens within a mobile application. Such uniformity becomes particularly invaluable in collaborative settings where diverse teams engage with the data, from development to marketing. As a result, the adoption of snake case for screen names not only streamlines the tracking process but also enhances the interpretability of the collected data, facilitating more seamless collaboration and informed decision-making across the organizational spectrum.