Mixpanel? What is it?
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Whenever I hear the words "Data analytics," the first things that come to mind are graphs, charts, and a whole lot of numbers! As someone who grew up not liking math (but later appreciated it), I never enjoyed trying to understand how x was related to y, or even z. However, the longer I spent in the IT industry, the more I realized the importance of these values. Is button x used often? Should I continue to improve it, or should I remove it entirely because it's not adding much value to the application? How do I keep track of different metrics? Clearly, I need a tool that helps me understand what's working and what isn't.
Recently, I have been exposed to Mixpanel. According to Mixpanel, Mixpanel was built to help product managers understand user behavior. I haven't tried many analytic tools in my experience as a software developer, but being exposed to Mixpanel has sparked a lot of curiosity.
While reading through the documentation, I learned that Mixpanel is best implemented on the server side. However, it can also be integrated on the client side. I experimented with Mixpanel in an ongoing project, and I was quite amazed by how well the data is organized, as long as you provide the correct set of values.
I got a bit too excited and decided to implement Mixpanel throughout most of the application, primarily tracking page views, button clicks, and link clicks.
If you want to know more, you may read the Documentation for Mixpanel. I specifically followed the guide for implementing Mixpanel when using Javascript here.
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash