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👋 Hello again, Vibe-Coders!
Just last week, we explored authentication, how your app knows who your users are. This week, we’re shifting focus from who is using your app to how they’re using it.
If you’ve ever added a button and wondered, “Is anyone clicking this?” or “Are users getting stuck here?” this one is for you. We’re diving into the art (and the accessible science) of product analytics: measuring what people do inside your app so you can improve it with certainty. Are you ready?
Let’s dive in!
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📖 Coding Basics Explained: Product Analytics
What It Is:
Product analytics is the process of tracking and understanding how people interact with your app or website: what buttons they click, what pages they spend time on, and where they stop and leave. Think of it like putting a gentle sensor in your app so you can see real user behavior.
Real-World Comparison:
Picture a small café you own. You watch customers come in, maybe take a seat, glance at the menu, and decide to order or not. You notice: most people skip the smoothie section, the corner table is always occupied, and the restroom line forms at 7 pm. Over time, you build up mental notes about patterns. Analytics is simply turning those mental notes into actual data, so you don’t guess, you know.
Why You Care:
Without analytics, you’re designing the app based on your own assumptions: what you think users will do. With analytics, you design it based on what users actually do. That matters because successful apps (and websites) are not built on guesses alone; they’re built on evidence.
Simple Example:
Say you launch an app where users track their daily workouts. After a week, you see that 60% of users complete one session, but only 20% come back on day two. That’s a clue: perhaps the onboarding is too long, or the second session isn’t compelling. Analytics gives you that clue. Without it, you might never notice the drop-off and just wonder, “Why are people quitting?”
🔑 The Beginner Breakthrough
The Stuck Moment:
You might be thinking: “Everyone tells me I should look at analytics, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t even know what to track. It seems complex, and I feel like I’ll mess it up or it won’t matter.”
Why This Happens:
Because analytics is often framed in techy terms: dashboards, events, funnels, tracking code. As a complete beginner, that can make you feel like stepping into a lab you’re not trained for. The message you get is: “You need to code it, set it up, interpret it”, which makes it feel inaccessible.
The Simple Fix:
Pick one thing to track, and use a tool that requires no coding. Focus on a single clear question like: “Do users click the main ‘Start Now’ button?” Or: “Do they scroll past the first section of my landing page?” Start simple. The data you get from tracking one key action will already give you an insight you didn’t have.
What This Unlocks:
Once you see one real behaviour pattern, you gain clarity. You go from “I think people are doing X” to “I see people doing Y.” With that clarity, you can confidently make changes (rather than guess). That shift is huge; it turns you from an app-designer of assumptions into an app-designer of evidence. And that changes the game.
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🛠 Tool That Makes Sense: Simple Analytics
Beginner Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4/5 – very easy to use, minimal setup)
Perfect For:
Creators and founders with zero code background who want to see how users interact with a prototype, landing page, or app demo, without wrestling with developer tools or tracking code.
Why It’s Great:
Simple Analytics is designed around the idea of giving you meaningful user insights with minimal fuss. You set up a small tracking snippet (copy-paste) or integrate via a no-code tool you already use. Then you’ll see dashboards that show things like: which pages are visited, how far people scroll, where they spend the most time, or leave. It’s built for non-technical folks.
Honest Reality:
Yes, there’s still a tiny bit of setup (you’ll paste a snippet or connect via a plug-in), and you’ll need to wait a little while (a few visits) for meaningful data. Also, while the tool is simple, making sense of what to do with the data still takes thought. But you don’t need to know coding, you don’t need to build your own tracking system.
📚 Jargon of the Week
Word: Heatmap
What it sounds like: Some fancy techy map with colours and data all over it.
What it actually means: A visual display showing which parts of your page or app screen get the most attention (clicks, taps, movements) and which parts people ignore. The “hotter” (redder) the spot, the more action it has.
Real-world analogy: Picture the floor of your café after a day of service; people clustered around the corner table, no one at the smoothie display. If you drew a colour map over the floor, the busy table area would be red-hot, the smoothie section blue-cold. That’s a heatmap for your app.
Why you’ll hear it: Because many analytics tools show heatmaps, it’s a quick way to visualise where users really are vs. where you thought they’d be.
🚀 Try This Right Now
See one small piece of real behaviour on a page of yours
How to Begin:
Visit the Simple Analytics homepage and click the “Get Started” or “Free Trial” option. (You don’t need to pay; many tools offer a free starter version.) Then, put in the URL of the website you want to track the analytics of, and find the tracking snippet they’ll give to you.
Where To Plug In:
Paste the tracking snippet they give you into your landing page or prototype. If your prototype is built in a no-code tool, look for the plug-in or tracking option. Don’t worry, no code writing is required, just copy-paste.
What Happens Next:
Share your link with two or three friends (or open it in one more browser). Wait a little while (an hour or so). Then open your Simple Analytics dashboard. Look at the heatmap: see where people clicked, how far they scrolled. Did they reach the section where you ask them to take action (like “Sign Up” or “Play”)? Did they stop before the important part?
Psychology:
By doing this, you experience firsthand that analytics is not just about spreadsheets or data overwhelm, it’s about observing real people in real time. That observation becomes a concrete starting point, which demystifies the whole idea of “tracking users”. It empowers you.
🚀 Mini-Project Challenge
What You’ll Build:
A simple “Insight Board”, a one-page visual summary of how users interact with your key page or prototype, powered by Simple Analytics.
Why It Matters:
You’ve tracked one behaviour. Now you’ll summarise what you find, decide what to change, and plan the next step. This builds your “creator muscle” of looking, learning, adjusting, not just building blindly.
Using This Week’s Tool:
You already connected Simple Analytics in the previous section. Now you’ll use it to capture actual user behaviour and reflect on it.
Your Mission (15-30 minutes):
Choose one page you care about (your landing page, sign-up page, demo intro page).
Make sure you’ve installed Simple Analytics tracking and share the link so that at least a few visits happen.
After a few visits (or after some friends check it out), open the dashboard and take note of:
Which areas get the most interaction (clicks/scrolls)?
Which areas are ignored?
Did users reach the main action (e.g., click “Start”, “Join”, “Learn More”)?
On a blank slide, document the insight:
“Top interaction: headline image”
“Ignored section: benefits list under the fold”
“Only 1 of 10 visitors clicked ‘Join’” (example findings)
Decide on one specific change you’ll make based on that insight (e.g., shorten the page, move the “Join” button higher, highlight the benefit section with colour).
Success Looks Like:
You have a visual board that says something like:
“Insight: Users don’t scroll. Change: Move final call-to-action above the fold.”
That means you’re not just collecting data, you’re acting on it. You’ve transformed an abstract metric into a concrete change.
A big win for your beginner self. 🎉
💪🔮 Weekly Roundup
Let’s take a breath, look at how far you’ve come!
You now understand what product analytics really is: simply “watching behaviour to improve experience.”
You’ve learned that data isn’t scary; it’s just feedback from real humans.
You’ve even started your first analytics mini-project (how cool is that?).
Every big creator started exactly where you are, tracking one thing, learning one truth, and improving from there.
Next Week, we’ll talk about Documentation: how to write things down so your future self (and your AI buddy) always knows what’s going on. It’s the unsung superpower behind every great project.
You’re doing amazing. Keep that curiosity alive. 🌱
Important: If you’d like a detailed dive into vibe-coding, find me on LinkedIn so I can share my expertise with you!
So you like what you see? Then why don’t you…