Product analytics in plain English
Short, honest definitions of the concepts product analytics is built on, and how Pug implements each.
Autocapture
Collecting events automatically (clicks, scrolls, forms) from one SDK snippet, without coding each event.
Read definitionFunnel analysis
Measuring how users move through ordered steps toward a goal, and where they drop off.
Read definitionRetention cohort analysis
Grouping users by when they started, then tracking what fraction return over time.
Read definitionUser flow analysis
Mapping the paths people take through your product, where they go next, where they drop.
Read definitionUnified customer profile
Merging anonymous and signed-in activity across devices into one identity per person.
Read definitionEvent tracking
Recording the actions people take (clicks, signups, purchases) as named events with properties.
Read definitionIdentity resolution
Linking a person’s events across devices and anonymous and known states into one profile.
Read definitionPersonally identifiable information (PII)
Any data that identifies a person alone or combined: names and emails, but also IPs, device IDs, and user IDs.
Read definitionBot traffic
Visits generated by software rather than people: crawlers, monitors, scrapers and headless browsers.
Read definitionSession
One visitor’s continuous visit, ended by an inactivity window - the unit behind bounce rate and session duration.
Read definitionBounce rate
The share of sessions with a single interaction, and why a high one is often not a problem.
Read definitionUTM parameters
Tags added to a link’s query string so analytics can report where a visit came from.
Read definitionMarketing attribution
Assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touches before it: channels, and the models that split credit.
Read definitionConversion rate
The share of people who complete a desired action out of everyone who had the chance.
Read definitionChurn rate
The percentage of customers, users, or revenue you lose over a period, the inverse of retention.
Read definitionActive users
Unique people active in a window (DAU, WAU, MAU), and the stickiness ratio between them.
Read definitionNorth Star metric
The single measure that best captures the core value your product delivers to customers.
Read definitionSee these in a real product
Pug is open-source product analytics with unified profiles: autocapture, funnels, retention, and flows. Self-host under AGPL-3.0, or use the free cloud beta.
Questions? Email hello@pug.sh