What to Track First: A Practical Starter Set

A focused blueprint for teams standing up analytics without boiling the ocean.

1) Pageviews and Sessions

Start with a reliable stream of pageview events, each associated with a visitor and a session. Sessions should expire after a period of inactivity (e.g., 30 minutes). Include URL, title, referrer, language, timezone, viewport size, and UTM parameters where present.

Why: This is the backbone for funnels, pathing, and attribution. If this layer is flaky, everything above it suffers.

2) Primary Calls to Action

Instrument a handful of primary CTAs such as Sign up, Contact, or Request demo. Attach stable identifiers and optional metadata (e.g., placement = hero/footer/sidebar).

  • Track click events with an outbound flag for external destinations.
  • Include a short, sanitized text snippet for easier reporting.

3) Forms (Completion and Errors)

Emit an event when important forms are submitted, plus an error event for client-side validation failures (missing required fields, invalid email, etc.). Avoid sending PII; derive only what you need for aggregate metrics (e.g., “invalid_email = true”).

Why: Small changes to copy, field order, or validation can materially change completion rate.

4) Search Signals

Capture search_query (with query string and result count) and search_select (the chosen item). Monitor zero-result rate and popular queries to improve navigation and content coverage.

5) Engagement Basics

Track scroll depth in coarse bands (e.g., 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%) and consider periodic heartbeat pings while the page is visible. These signals help you distinguish idle tabs from engaged readers.

6) Outbound Links

Outbound clicks are a great sanity check for event delivery because they commonly occur right before navigation. Use sendBeacon where available so the event flushes without delaying the user.

7) Client-Side Errors and Performance

Capture error and unhandledrejection to monitor client stability. For performance, a minimal set—TTFB, DOM ready, load event, FCP, and LCP—goes a long way toward spotting regressions.

Data Quality and Privacy

  • Respect Do Not Track and implement a site-wide consent gate where required.
  • Favor stable event names and consistent properties; avoid schema drift.
  • Do not ship PII to analytics; hash or drop sensitive fields.
  • Prefer background-safe delivery (sendBeacon) with a resilient fallback and retry.

Rollout Checklist

  1. Verify pageviews across all templates and SPAs (history changes included).
  2. Tag primary CTAs with stable identifiers and metadata.
  3. Emit form success and client-side validation errors.
  4. Capture search queries, results count, and selections.
  5. Record scroll depth bands and periodic heartbeats.
  6. Ensure outbound links are classified and delivered reliably.
  7. Log client errors and basic performance timings.

Conclusion

Start with a lean, durable schema and prove end-to-end delivery. Once trustworthy, extend with business events (pricing interactions, onboarding steps, feature usage) and wire them to decisions: product changes, documentation updates, and roadmap priorities.