99% of App Teams Use Analytics Wrong

99% of app teams use analytics wrong.

They track outcomes. Downloads, conversion rates, revenue. The numbers at the end of the funnel. And they stop there.

But here's what they miss: if you're only tracking outcomes, you have no idea what's actually causing them.

Let me give you an example.

Your ratings are low. You tell the developer to improve the review prompt trigger. They ship it. And now you wait.

But how do you know it's working? Are more users actually seeing the prompt? What percentage are tapping "Rate" versus dismissing it? Is it even firing at all?

If you didn't track the prompt itself, you have no idea. You shipped a change and moved on.

The fix: every time you ask a developer to implement something that matters, also ask them to instrument it. A review_prompt_shown event. A review_prompt_accepted event. A review_prompt_dismissed event.

Now you can actually diagnose the problem. Is it a reach issue or a conversion issue? Is it working for paid users but not free ones? For new users but not long-term ones? You can only answer those questions if you tracked it.

And that's before we get to event properties. Pass context with each event. Where in the user journey did it fire? What plan is the user on? How long have they been a customer? Now you can slice the data any way you need.

Tracking outcomes is table stakes. Tracking the mechanisms behind those outcomes is where the real learning happens.

Stop tracking what happened. Start tracking why.