Analyse analytics.js API to Match Event Format

[nelsonic]

Context

Sement.io now https://segment.com/ is a highly popular way of "routing" your analytics data/events to various service to several services including Google Analytics, MixPanel, Facebook Ads, etc.

Many people (projects/teams/organisations) use Analytics.js from Segment.io:
https://github.com/segmentio/analytics.js because it allows you to write code once.

Why?

Q: Why should we attempt to match the format of events & function invocation from analytics.js?
A: Because if we make our events compatible with analytics.js we can eliminate any (technical) objection to adoption/usage and minimise the "friction" to switching.

We want to make a dramatically simplified Analytics UX that (digital) Product Owners will actually look at and use to be more "data driven".

Our experience of working with a many (70+) Web Product Owners over the past 17 years
building web sites and Sites/Apps - ranging from basic single-page apps to global multi-lingual billions-in-revenue e-commerce mega projects and everything in between - has taught us a lot about how people actually use (but most often fail to use) analytics to drive business decisions.
Most projects/apps have Google Analytics and a few even use Segment.com or MixPanel,
but in our experience there is no habit of consulting the data (insights) during daily stand-ups, feature/backlog/sprint planning meetings or Demos.
We feel this a crying shame. 😢
Because it means that:
a) the team (devs, designers, PO) isn't focussing on

• what works ✅,
• what's "broken" 💔 and
• how to delight users.😍

b) users are almost invariably getting a worse experience that only meets some of their needs
c) the "wrong" thing is being built. e.g: more features built when users needs fewer better ones.
d) everyone's time is being wasted! ⏳

What?

A distillation of analytics.js down to the bare essentials.
So that we can build/use just (exactly) what we need.

Who?

The ideal person to do this work is someone who has used analytics.js a few times in "production".
I (Nelson) have only used analytics.js once (despite having used GA/GTM many times).
Thankfully if we build something useful and "Show HN",
we will get enough feedback from the community to "steer" us.

How? (#TODO)

• Go through the API https://segment.com/docs/sources/website/analytics.js with a "beginners mind" (but factoring our experience of building many apps) and summarise how to use it.

• Build a Prototype Application that Demonstrates Logging Analytics Events using:

  • Elixir (Phoenix) for the Server (because it handles more requests and is fault tolerant!)
  • ES5 JavaScript (possibly PureScript) for the client component.

• Attempt to create a "framework" that treats all data updates as analytics events.
  such that when a user submits a form, we don't need to log the event twice;
  the submission is the event! (i.e. the analytics needs to be "full stack". both an API and a module.)

[nelsonic]

Next:

• https://www.google.pt/search?q=how+to+use+analytics.js
• https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/
• https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/how-analyticsjs-works