PROGRO
When analytics doesn’t work as expected, the issue is rarely a single broken dashboard. More often, it’s an accumulation of minor inconsistencies, tracking errors, and data pipeline issues that go unnoticed—until critical decisions are made based on incorrect data.
As analytics engineers, our job isn't just to visualize data but to ensure it accurately reflects user behavior. This guide walks through the seven most common hidden failures in analytics setups and how to proactively identify one by one.
Data Drift in Event Tracking - When 'Clicked Sign-Up' Doesn't Always Mean Sign-Up
- Misaligned event tracking is one of the biggest pain killers of analytics reliability. Over time, event schemata diverge without proper governance; conventions aren't enforced, and different teams start using the same event for different purposes.
How to Fix it:
- Event Schema Standardization: Maintain a central tracking plan; ideally via a tool like Segment or Avo tracking event naming, properties, and expected purpose.
- Automated Event Audits: Use tools like Amplitude's Data QA, Hotjar's Autocapture, or custom tests to verify that all tracking performs correctly; simple SQL queries.
- Cross-team Monitoring: Introduce periodic cross-platform data validation using SQL or automation tools to ensure correctness across teams and projects.
Silent Data Loss: The Problem with Missing Events
- A bigger issue than incorrect data is missing data.
- Many teams assume that because events are tracked, they are automatically being sent and recorded in dashboards. But in reality, many events fail to fire due to:
How to Fix it:
- Implement Server-Side Event Tracking: Reduce reliance on front-end tracking alone by sending key events from backend services.
- Set Up Event Logging & Alerting: Use a reverse ETL tool (like Census or Hightouch) to compare front-end and back-end logs for discrepancies.
- Use Synthetic Testing for Analytics Pipelines: Automate event monitoring using tools like ObservePoint or custom scripts that fire test events at regular intervals.
