How analytics events are used in practice

A funnel is an ordered set of events: signup_started → email_verified → project_created. You care about drop-off between steps, not just landing-page traffic.

Best fit: PostHog, mature GA4 explorations. Light goals only: Plausible/Fathom custom events — useful for one conversion, weak for multi-step product funnels.

Retention asks whether users come back and do the core action again. That requires stable identity and a clear "active" event.

Product analytics tools are built for this. Web analytics tools usually stop at returning visitors by cookie or cookieless approximation — a different question.

Two common patterns:

• Ecommerce / purchase events inside GA4 or PostHog
• Payment-provider attribution (e.g. DataFast + Stripe) that ties revenue to the visit that led to checkout

Pick the pattern that matches how you sell. Indie SaaS often wants channel → paid customer; marketplaces want item-level purchase events.

Events tell you *that* something failed (checkout_error). Session replay and heatmaps help you see *why*. Hotjar and PostHog sit in that adjacent lane — heavier privacy and performance review required.

Instrument the failure event first; add replay only where tickets prove you need video.

Every event has a cost: engineering time, quota, and dashboard trust. Prefer a short list of decision-grade events over autocapture of every click.

New to the idea of events? Start with Analytics Events: What They Are and Why They Matter.