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028 - Product Analytics - The Art of Event Tracking
224 Plays3 months ago
In the world of app-based products, event tracking is the backbone of understanding user behaviour, engagement, and product success. But with so much data available, how do you decide what to track? How do you avoid over-tracking while ensuring your insights drive real business impact?
In this episode of the Stacked Data Podcast, I sit down with Matt R, Head of Data at Paired, to break down the art of event tracking—what to track, what to ignore, and how to ensure your analytics strategy is built for action, not overload.
🔥 𝕎𝕙𝕒𝕥 𝕎𝕖 ℂ𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣:
✅ How to define and prioritize the “right” events to track
✅ Avoiding common pitfalls like over-tracking & inconsistent data
✅ Best practices for documentation, governance, and making event data actionable
✅ How to communicate the importance of tracking to non-technical teams
✅ Practical advice for setting up event tracking in mobile apps from scratch
Whether you’re a data professional, product manager, or startup founder, this episode will give you the framework to master event tracking and turn data into real insights that drive growth.
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Transcript
Introduction to Stacked Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Stacked podcast brought to you by Cognify, the recruitment partner for modern data teams hosted by me, Harry Golub. Stacked with incredible content from the most influential and successful data teams, interviewing industry experts who share their invaluable journeys, groundbreaking projects, and most importantly, their key learnings.
Interview with Matt Roninski on Product Analytics
00:00:25
Speaker
So get ready to join us as we uncover the dynamic world of modern data.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Stacked Data Podcast. Today I'm joined by Matt Roninski, the Head of Data at Paired. And today we're going to be diving into the world of product analytics and tracking. Tracking is so important to understand user behavior, which is obviously pivotal to product development and to improve customer experience and And I suppose thus far engagement and and equally revenue for a business. So really excited to dive into the areas of product analytics and tracking with
Matt's Career Journey and Passion for Data
00:01:07
Speaker
Matt. He's had extensive experience in it. So yeah, I suppose welcome to the show, Matt. It's lovely to have you here. Yeah. Thanks very much, Harry. Very well said.
00:01:17
Speaker
Brilliant. Well, um for the audience, I suppose it'd be great just to get a bit of an overview of of yourself. What's been your journey and data? How did you get into it and yeah how have you ended up here at Paired?
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, sure. um So came to the UK in 2017 after i finishing my degree in physics. I took a job of ah of a growth analyst intern at Busu and very quickly fell off in both the data side of things, the startup scene in London and the tech sector generally.
00:01:52
Speaker
Stayed at Busu for a good three years, moved around, done quite a few projects on the product analytics side. Marketing analytics work with great product managers on A-B testing, understanding how ah people are using the product.
00:02:10
Speaker
worked with the marketing team on the performance marketing side of things, was very lucky with my first manager as well, which kind of gave me a very good foundation, a good business foundation for being a product analyst, which I think is very important. Then I wanted to see what else is there. So I moved to Babylon Health in 2019. I had a quite brief stint there on the commercial side of things. During the pandemic, I moved to Gusto.
00:02:36
Speaker
And absolutely loved it, stayed there for over three years. Again, worked on the product side of things, mainly with A B testing, trying to improve how the digital product works. And then kind of climbed the ladder there, but started to manage people, which was a great experience.
00:02:54
Speaker
And yeah, after that January this year, I moved to Pades. I thought I want to go back to the startup scene, to the small scale business. I was really missing the kind of the atmosphere of a startup.
00:03:09
Speaker
and the tempo. um So, yeah, decided to accept an offer. And since joining, managed to you know work on a few very interesting projects. I think a month ago or so got got promoted to the head of data from a data
Overview of Paired App and Its Features
00:03:24
Speaker
lead. So, happy days.
00:03:26
Speaker
Brilliant, brilliant. I suppose it'd be great for the audience to understand a bit more about paired as as well as a mobile app. Yeah, yeah so pair is a relationship care app. The whole idea behind the product is to improve the relationship quality of couples.
00:03:43
Speaker
mainly through improving communication in the app. We have a lot of different friend questions, quizzes, games, things to help you connect with your partner on a deeper level, potentially have conversations that you wouldn't have otherwise. We have around 200,000 daily active users at the moment, and the the product is growing, and we're getting amazing feedback from our users. So we're doing something right.
Significance of Product Analytics and Event Tracking
00:04:09
Speaker
Brilliant. And obviously looking at your your past companies, Gusto and everywhere, it seems to be very digital product heavy, which obviously links very nicely to to product analytics and tracking. So I suppose first off, for the audience, help us understand you know what is what is the value of product analytics and what is what is tracking? What are we actually going to be talking about?
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, let's start with a little bit maybe a a definition of like what what an event is, an event tracking generally. so Yeah, when when we talk about events, I guess on the basic level is we have an action that's accompanied by a panta timestamp. So you can track your your daily activities, 7 a.m., wake up, 8 a.m., go to work, 12 p.m., eat lunch, and that sort of thing. And that transfers into the digital world where we
00:05:08
Speaker
we're getting an opportunity to kind of look how people are using our digital product. In the physical world, it's easy. You can see people walking around the store, picking things up, potentially spending more time in one corner of the shop than the other one. But we don't have that in the digital world. So we need to implement events in order to have an equivalent of that visibility of what actually people are interested inside of the digital product. so That's that's the the fundamentals of what tracking is. And then when it comes to the importance of it for product analytics and product analytics generally is we are the ones that then look at this data and try to make sense out of out of that and try to you know provide insights to the business.
00:05:59
Speaker
in order they to improve user experience and then hopefully as an outcome of that improve business performance. So we are kind of the product analytics side of things is the area where we really try to interpret that data and dig deep and try to see how we can transfer that into an insight that then can be actioned on improve the user experience.
00:06:24
Speaker
So essentially it's ah it's a window into into a digital product to be able to see how your your customers are engaging and and and utilizing it. Exactly. Brilliant. so So when it comes to event tracking ah you know in in app and digital based products like PED, what's an important consideration to keep in mind as ah as a product analyst?
Aligning Tracking with Business Objectives and Questions
00:06:49
Speaker
Yeah, so i think I think the most important one, and that's going to be something that I think is going to be a recurring theme of this episode, is yeah you need to start with but business objectives and with with business questions. Don't just try to track everything that's inside your your product.
00:07:08
Speaker
you really need to interpret the requirements from the business question, what is the conversion rate on our payment pages? Where are people signing up from? What features are they using? So that's really, really important.
00:07:23
Speaker
you will probably need a tool ah to analyze that data. SQL is not very well suited for analyzing sequential events. First of all, this if if you start tracking, you're going to quickly see that the size of that data is massive, and then just SQL is not not very well suited, so you will need to invest in ah in a good tool that will help you to unlock the real value behind the data.
00:07:51
Speaker
Then you need to think about adoption. So, you know, people around the business IDV will use this data themselves. For us, it's paid as a massive kind of lever for self-safe. Product managers, you know, designers, even our CEO are all using this data ah via amplitude, which is the tool that we're using at Fade.
00:08:15
Speaker
And it it's serving them serving them great and you know removes data as the bottleneck, answering some simple questions. And then you have you know maintenance and governance. and This is a big one. it's It's not enough to just implement it and just like go away and and leave it to be. You need to keep an eye on it. You need to you know do the housekeeping periodically, review the events and what's being fired from from your app.
00:08:43
Speaker
Otherwise, the number of events can very easily balloon into and into thousands. And before you know it, you it's it's a complete chaos. And people start losing trust in the data and and nobody is using it. So that's very important.
00:08:59
Speaker
And yeah ownership, there needs to be a name next to this whole process, someone that's owning it and someone that's keeping an eye on it, and ideally the person to go to if if anything breaks and that's having an eye on and all of the systems. And obviously, all of this is way easier said than done. All of these are big challenges um that are not easy to you to tackle, but yeah, are definitely crucial.
00:09:28
Speaker
ah lights obviously there I think let's let's start with with where where you started, obviously that asking the right questions. and I think there's too many data professionals that don't ask the right questions or are scared of maybe asking the the questions to to the business. Why is it so important to ask the right the right questions? And what strategies and advice can you give to two people to be able to to ask the right questions?
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah, so it's super important mainly because the temptation to track every single UI component in the app is very high. But you know I want to know how many people click on this button is not a valid business question. And there's a lot of companies that that have that approach of just let's let's just track everything. There's a toggle button. I want to know how many people click that toggle button. I want to know how many people click this component. But the issue what what you should start from is you know what behaviors of the users you really want to understand.
00:10:31
Speaker
what sort of business questions you want to answer with this data. So, whether this is conversion rates, whether this is, you know, the engagement with certain features, you first start with these, and then you try to understand what sort of events will help you answer these questions.
00:10:54
Speaker
Don't start with the tracking and then try to figure out what questions you can answer and based on the tracking that you have. um you know Do it the other way. And the business questions, you know in order to gather them, obviously, you need to engage the the whole business. You need to talk with your product managers. They're going to have brilliant ideas about what sort of things they would like to understand about user behavior.
00:11:18
Speaker
talk to you know the senior stakeholders and the leadership team, understand what sort of business questions they would like to answer, talk to your marketing team, they will also have a set of questions. When you gather that and you know prioritize it, you you will get a very good idea of what sort of tracking you need in order to potentially answer a few of those. And that makes it actionable instantly as well.
00:11:46
Speaker
Brilliant. So yeah, speaking with everyone, I think, and particularly in product analytics, you know, products and marketing are so closely linked, you want to better improve the product, but then understand who's using the products to so push that into to marketing. So they go hand in hand and it saves like the the avoiding of analysis paralysis with only tracking these, the correct events, but starting with the question, not the event tracking to start.
Key Metrics and Challenges in Event Tracking
00:12:13
Speaker
Could you share any specific examples, Matt, of, I suppose, key events that that you track ah paired that that have provided sort of significant value in in understanding used behavior? Yeah, sure. yeah As I said, paired is ah you know a relationship pair app, so there are a few key components here. ah First of all, you need a partner.
00:12:35
Speaker
Second of all, you need to convince them i once UI complains that page is a good tool, you need to convince your partner too to come and join the platform. And then the last one and the most important one is you you need to talk to each other. So you need to answer the but conversations, as we call them, so the quizzes, the games, the the questions, and then your partner needs to answer them as well. So based on that, you can imagine I don't know, five different events that say ah sign up completes when somebody signs up to the platform, pairing complete when they successfully motivate their partner to join and sign up to the platform as well. Then you can have conversation answered and conversation completed. So that's when one person answers and when both people answer the question.
00:13:24
Speaker
If you sprinkle a little bit of user properties on top of that, you can already start answering very interesting interesting questions like you know what percentage of people actually successfully bring their partner onto the platform? um Okay, how does that differ by country? How does that differ by age? Or if you have some sort of a survey inside your onboarding process where you know users ah select what is the reason for joining a product. you can then You can then segment that data through that as well.
00:14:01
Speaker
then you can go on to looking at the dynamics of the couples. So how many users actually successfully complete the first conversation when certain couples get into that disengagement a moment where one person is answering the conversations, but the other one is is not anymore. know how How much of that is needed for the user to churn. If you add payment completed, for example, into that pool, only with five or six events, you can already start answering very interesting questions that then the product team can take on and start potentially you know shaping the product towards a specific cohort of people that we see naturally engage very well. ah You can give it to the marketing team saying, we think that this demographic is really the kind of
00:14:59
Speaker
you know, power user demographic that we should be targeting because they're organically just very well engaged with the product. And you can even go to your, you know, senior leadership team and share what interesting things you you have found about your users that are always, you know, happy to learn those things. And these are these are the things that we are doing at Payed, you know. um really trying to understand what are the users doing in the product and then using that as a kind of springboard to create a better user experience for them.
00:15:35
Speaker
Brilliant. And obviously, your better user experience is hopefully a better business outcomes and ah business growth, which is obviously the key factor, I think, for for many organizations. So we've spoken about, I suppose, well what event tracking is and some of the you know the benefits and the types of questions you can then answer and the window it gives you inside your your product. but As you alluded to, it's it's not as easy. It's easier said than than done. So what are some of the biggest sort of challenges in in product analytics and and tracking? Yeah, so the biggest one I think that I've seen at least is overtracking or lack of tracking. But I think overtracking is definitely the biggest one. If I would have to guess, I would say
00:16:24
Speaker
that the status quo at the moment is probably that companies are tracking too many events. um It's a guess, I might be wrong, but this is the impression that I i got. So currently at Parade, we have around 200 events that we're tracking, and we're still trying to just skim that list too to an even lower number.
00:16:46
Speaker
But there are companies that the events go into thousands. And you can have situations where you have inconsistency of naming between different platforms. You have some events that are not being used anymore. You can have events that are just wrong. They just fire in the wrong place in the app based on their description. And you you can have a situation where people just don't know what events mean.
00:17:11
Speaker
There's so many of them that they just don't know which one to use. you know and And that, again, that just results in complete erosion of trust in the data and results in nobody using it. That's why it's it's super, super important to, again, start with business questions, implement the fundamental 2030 events that you really need in order to answer those.
00:17:35
Speaker
and then go from there. If you are in this situation where you have thousands of events being tracked and you know somebody new comes into the company and asks, oh, why are we not using this beautiful events that we have here? And you know the answer is, oh, yeah, they're wrong. and It's probably better to to start fresh and honestly just implement it again, unless there is someone that's dedicated to that.
00:18:01
Speaker
um can really understand which events do we need, which events we we don't need, them and try to save save that situation. But yeah, definitely number one over tracking. Another one, I think, is lack of ownership. So, you know, the tracking is being implemented, everything works great, but there's no one really owning this process. No one following it along. No one's seeing what the actual tracking is picking up.
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And then nobody kind of maintaining it in the long run and then load happens. And that's how we end up with those thousands of events because nobody is doing the housekeeping periodically and saying, do we really
Ensuring Actionable Data and Documentation
00:18:41
Speaker
need this event? you know This stopped firing, but I can see still see it in my product analytics platform.
00:18:47
Speaker
So, you know, you need to have someone, ah you need to have a name next to the process that's responsible for this working, a name or in a bigger company, potentially a team that's responsible for this.
00:19:01
Speaker
So that's very important. And then discoverability, that's also another one. We're probably going to talk about it, but you need to have documentation. You need to have a good event tracking plan where the events are listed with descriptions what they mean, what sort of properties are firing with these events, and it needs to be easy for people to go there and understand what sort of events they need to use in order to answer a certain questions.
00:19:29
Speaker
I think we can obviously expand a bit more on on on that point around discoverability and documentation. I suppose go handin hand in hand in hands. I mean, it'd be great to hear some real world examples of how how you make this discoverable to an organization and then yeah, what's your sort of non-negotiables that have to be in your in your tracking documentation and what people should be applying in in their worlds.
00:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, so we have at Perry the mix of documentation. So Amplitude is doing a pretty good job when it comes to events tracking plan. There is the part of the platform that's dedicated to providing descriptions, making sure that everything is consistently named, making sure that events that are firing are the events that you're expecting to see. And then we have a spreadsheet which realistically a majority of the companies. It's going to be a spreadsheet and the event tracking plan.
00:20:28
Speaker
is usually living day. If you Google event tracking plan templates, you're going to have multiple different examples of very good, ready to digest documents, ah copy paste, start typing your own your own things there. Yeah, a few things that it needs to have is obviously the platform that a given event is firing from, the event name, whether the event is active or just a general status of an event.
00:20:56
Speaker
the properties that should be firing with the event and then, you know, a proper description so that a PM, a designer, anybody that goes in there is able to understand where in the product and this is firing from. So, yeah, that's that's the general approach. In amplitude, it's easier to do certain things. You know, you have a lighting where you're not Expecting a certain event to fire, somebody from the analytics team actually needs to go into amplitude and select that this event is indeed something that we can we want to see. And then the whole kind of maintenance is much easier. ah You can sort events by the number of the volume in the last daily days. You can see who was querying this data. So cleaning is is as much, much easier, and housekeeping is much easier as well.
00:21:52
Speaker
I imagine it makes it easier for for new joiners as well as your growing data team and just a growing organization to be able to come and see and get up to speed with things much much quicker and allows you to not get into that stage where you're you're having to tear it all down and rebuild it again.
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Okay, so I suppose this is you've given some great tips and and tricks there for for how to to overcome some of the biggest challenges that that you've seen around sort of overtracking, undertracking, what events to to track, and then how you you make sure they're discoverable. But but how do you ensure that the event data is is actionable and you know is driving real real value for the business. How do you measure the value of of what you're youre you're doing?
00:22:46
Speaker
yeah so it It goes back it goes back to the to the business questions. I think if yeah if people take anything from from this episode, that's that's a good that's a good takeaway. You need to start with business questions. And if you do that,
00:23:04
Speaker
You're able, with the event data, you're able to answer these, go back to the stakeholders that were initially asking that, and that will be actionable. Product people are asking these questions for a reason. They want to make the product better. If they are curious about an engagement with with certain features, it's because they want to improve it or they want to have ideas for new A-B tests.
00:23:29
Speaker
and so if the marketing team is asking about you know signups by acquisition channels because they want to allocate their budget. if If you can provide answers to that, I'm pretty certain that is going to be actionable instantly. And I think yeah teams that are going to do this well, at least in 2024, where event tracking is something that's pretty well established, teams that will have and event tracking implemented in the correct way are going to have a massive leverage over it the ones that don't.
Impact of Well-Implemented Event Tracking on Business
00:24:04
Speaker
It gives you so much insight
00:24:08
Speaker
into how people are using your products that otherwise you just you wouldn't have. This is absolutely crucial for driving user experience and driving business value. And then when it comes to the measurements, you know you need to keep an eye. the The data team can only go so far. like We're here to to provide these insights, to get the relevant people in the room, and to share those insights with them.
00:24:37
Speaker
We can give recommendations and we should be giving recommendations of how we think this data should be integrated and how this data should be actioned. But at the end of the day, it's up to the teams that we you know show those insights to action on them. But at the same time, there's no better feeling, I think, as an analyst when you you know go and look through this data, get those insights.
00:25:00
Speaker
get people in the room, you know, share it with them. And then in a few weeks' times, you see an A-B test running that's a direct kind of result of the insights that you've provided, or you see that the marketing team potentially changed the allocation of their budget. And if you can see that, that means that you're doing you're doing your job.
00:25:20
Speaker
I think it's it's clear the the headline for the episode is is ah ask great questions and work with the the business to to understand what questions they're asking. I think my advice is is also not to necessarily to take what a stakeholder says at at face value, you know challenge them on why they're asking that as well. Because I think sometimes, I hear and see data professionals that do just just just Just do what a stakeholder has said, whereas in fact, you actually need to understand, I think, the but why they're asking that question, because it might be that there's another area which they which you need to look at, or which might be the you know the root cause of what they' of what they're after.
Advice for Data Professionals on Stakeholder Engagement
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:26:04
Speaker
you can You can have product managers being very particular about a certain component in the UI. you know How many people click this button? And then you have to dig and say, why why do you want to know this? you know Bigger question that you're trying to understand here that you're not telling me. And yeah, if you if you pull if you pull that string a little bit, then you will get the big question that you can definitely try and answer.
00:26:28
Speaker
Nice. say I think that definitely should be should be people's take home for this. is that you know Just keep on digging. Keep on asking the questions. un Unleash your your curiosity because that's where you're going to drive the the the real value. and I suppose, Matt, closing thoughts from you, for any sort of product analytics or aspiring product analysts so um starting up in in either their career or in a new role, what would be your advice on top of this sort of endless curiosity and a good question answering? what what what What would be your advice to to them if they're they're starting this journey?
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, on on the event tracking, I would say definitely don't overcomplicate things at the beginning if you're just starting with it. Get people in the room, ask questions, try to find out what they would like to know about the users, and then start with a very fundamental 20, 30 events and and build from there. you know Pick a product analytics tool that meets your needs. ah For us, it was amplitudes, but there's Mixpanel, there's others. there you know Decide on the ownership of the tracking, who is responsible for the housekeeping, who is doing the cleaning, who is doing the implementation.
00:27:46
Speaker
And then, you know, champion champion the tool, champion the process, showcase the cool stuff that you can make with it, show some nice Sankey diagrams or or whatever it it is to get people excited and to get people into into the tool. And then for a general product analysts,
00:28:03
Speaker
I think just understand the products very well. Use it, definitely use it daily. Understand what are the flows, what are the pain points. Try to really put yourself in the user's shoes. And from that perspective, you know look at how the product is being used and just have endless curiosity and two into what the users are doing in your product and you're going to be just fine.
00:28:33
Speaker
Brilliant. Well, look, Matt, it's been a pleasure talking today. um Yeah, I think the the curiosity in the questions is is the key take home here. and But thank you for joining me on the podcast and all the best with everything to come ah at Perd. Yeah, thanks very much, Harry. Bye, everyone. See you next week.
00:28:52
Speaker
Well, that's it for this week. Thank you so, so much for tuning in. I really hope you've learned something. I know I have. The Stack podcast aims to share real journeys and lessons that empower you and the entire community. Together, we aim to unlock new perspectives and overcome challenges in the ever evolving landscape of modern data.
00:29:14
Speaker
Today's episode was brought to you by Cognify, the recruitment partner for modern data teams. If you've enjoyed today's episode, hit that follow button to stay updated with our latest releases. More importantly, if you believe this episode could benefit someone you know, please share it with them. We're always on the lookout for new guests who have inspiring stories and valuable lessons to share with our community.
00:29:36
Speaker
If you or someone you know fits that pill, please don't hesitate to reach out. I've been Harry Gollop from Cognify, your host and guide on this data-driven journey. Until next time, over and out.