Analytics FTW

Let me start this off by admitting I don't think this is devops related but it could be.

ANYWAY tracking...What do I mean? What am I tracking? Why is this a thing?

What is tracking?

Tracking - the collection of user data. User data can be almost anything you want it to be. Some common things people track are location of users, how many people make it through your checkout, how many people create accounts, number of logins, which screens are most popular, or average time spent on your site/in your app. There are a bunch of things you could track but you need to know the why so there isn't a bunch of data piling up (a story for a different day).

How did I get here?

How did I jump down this rabbit hole as a mobile dev? Well I kept dropping hints on twitter for a Google Analytics person and nobody seemed to have the skills so I just learned them myself. Now I'm not saying I'm a boss with it but I took some courses and can now set up my tracking to get more useful data instead of just all of it.

Why do I need to learn tracking?

Tracking is important for me at work and with personal apps. If you can show a pattern it's easier to predict what your next move should be. When it comes to mobile, tracking allows you to see what parts of your app people really like and what parts of the app are causing issues. Most apps now are all talking about using Google Tag Manager and it makes sense. Adding tags to certain actions on a page vs seeing a general stat that the page has been visited give you better insight to argue that you don't need 3 different buttons on the page. 🙃

How do you learn this stuff?

To get started I'd focus on 3 main courses. After completing these courses go find someone into data analytics or shoot your shot and offer your services? (sorry this is where my knowledge runs out)


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