

Ask HN: How to build the internal analytics for a SaaS startup? - shaohua

Currently working in a startup with zero analytics besides Google Analytics. Want to build a lot of more. Where to start? I know some tools such as analytics.js &#x2F; Mixpanel but what should the analytics strategy be?
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davismwfl
Are you asking which tools to use or what to measure? Strategy to me is what
to measure, although there is some technical strategy on how to measure and
display the data so it isn't overwhelming and useless.

First, measure most everything at the day, week, month and yearly level, then
do week over week, month over month and year over year comparisons. Usually
this means we store the most granular level and then rollup from there.

What to measure depends on what you are doing, but IMO these are some general
things you should always measure: signups, cancels, time on site, time from
signup to first use, A/B tests of course on features, pricing etc. This is in
addition to the normal reliability, server metrics etc. I recently setup our
sites to start tracking peoples first visit until signup, of course this isn't
foolproof as it relies on a cookie, but I think it will help us over time.

The key to the analytics/metrics is you want to be able to cross section them
and be able to look at when you add a new feature, or remove something etc.

Frankly, besides storing normal metrics, we store every API call, the time it
takes, who made it, which machines were involved etc. This lets us basically
look at everything that happens. From that I can get signups, cancellations,
engagement statistics and a whole host of other things, this solves most of
the business questions and almost all operational concerns like machines being
whacked.

Not saying my ideas are 100% right or even correct in all circumstances, but
thought I'd at least share.

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davismwfl
Also, just for a little more detail.

From the business you need to measure profitability, cash, revenue, customer
acquisition cost, supply chain (where the customer came from), customer value,
life time customer value, time to cover CAC etc. Not sure where you are at
with those.

Even in these broad categories there are lots of details. For example on
revenue, IMO you should measure it against head count, as well measure
profitability against # of employees etc. When you are bootstrapped or working
on the smallest possible budget, this will also help you know when you
can/should add more staff etc.

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shaohua
thanks a lot. This is a good starting point. Any external tool or lib that you
recommend?

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davismwfl
Not really a specific tool. We write all our analytics out and then do some
rollups in the database and use Highcharts to display them on the website. Not
super fancy, but effective. For our setup its more about the process to rollup
the data than a specific toolset. We wrote all our own metrics and tracking
using a middleware concept with Express in node.js. That's probably not
totally relevant to your use case.

Hopefully that helps a little. Let me know if I can help you any more, happy
to share whatever I can.

