Mixpanel glossary: everything you need to know to build better products

Building better products for your users is all about tracking and optimizing your digital strategy—determining metrics, measuring your key performance indicators (KPIs), and making data-driven decisions. But things get complicated as you dive deeper into these insights and start to act on them.  

That’s where Mixpanel comes in, offering simple workflows that enable you to effortlessly build powerful funnels, gain valuable insights into your top user flows, and create custom cohorts in just a few clicks. You won't need to waste hours writing SQL or wait for someone else to do it.

What is Mixpanel?

Mixpanel is an advanced analytics tool that tracks how people interact and engage with your product, app, or website, so you can improve the user experience (UX) and maximize conversions.

But you need to know exactly what this service offers and learn how to use its different features to make those changes that enhance UX and boost your performance.

For organizations investing in product-led growth, Mixpanel (like Contentsquare 👋)  offers a way to quantify experience quality—transforming subjective user journeys into objective opportunities for improvement. It's less about monitoring behavior than understanding it, with all the complexity and opportunity that entails.

🔥 Pro tip: use the Contentsquare x Mixpanel integration to connect the what with the why. When Mixpanel shows a drop-off or a dip in conversions, jump into Contentsquare tools like Session Replay to watch exactly what happened, Heatmaps to see where users clicked (or didn’t), and Surveys to hear directly from your visitors—so you’re not just guessing, you’re acting on real insight.

Apply Mixpanel events as filters in Contentsquare’s Session Replay tool to instantly watch relevant user sessions

4 major Mixpanel features explained

Mixpanel’s event-based data model empowers teams to interact with their user data, enabling effortless exploration and collaboration, so they can set ambitious yet realistic growth goals and successfully achieve them. 

This glossary explains 4 major features everyone using Mixpanel—whether you’re a product manager, developer, or do-it-yourself business owner—needs to know: 

1. Mixpanel Funnels

Understanding how users navigate your site or app is crucial for optimizing their journey. Mixpanel Funnels allows you to visualize the steps users take toward a specific goal, highlighting where they drop off and where they convert. By setting up funnels, you can

• Identify drop-off points: see exactly where users abandon the process, helping you pinpoint areas that need improvement

• Optimize conversion paths: analyze successful user journeys to replicate and enhance them for others

• Test and iterate: implement changes and measure their impact on user progression through the funnel

✍️ Check out our article on Mixpanel Funnels

2. Mixpanel Events

Tracking user interactions is foundational to understanding behavior. Mixpanel Events lets you monitor specific actions users take, such as clicks, form submissions, or purchases. Effectively utilizing events enables you to

• Gather detailed insights: collect data on user actions to understand engagement and identify trends

• Measure feature adoption: see which features are being used and how frequently, informing development priorities

• Trigger targeted responses: use event data to initiate personalized messages or support, enhancing the user experience

✍️ Check out our article on Mixpanel Events

3. Mixpanel Reports

Transforming raw data into actionable insights is streamlined with Mixpanel Reports. These customizable reports help you analyze user behavior and product performance by

• Visualizing data trends: create graphs and charts that make complex data understandable at a glance

• Segmenting users: break down data by demographics, behaviors, or other attributes to uncover patterns

• Sharing insights: easily distribute findings to your team to inform decision-making

✍️ Check out our article on Mixpanel Reports

4. Mixpanel Cohorts

Segmenting your audience allows for more personalized engagement. Mixpanel Cohorts enables you to group users based on shared characteristics or behaviors, allowing you to

• Segmenting your audience allows for more personalized engagement. Mixpanel Cohorts enables you to group users based on shared characteristics or behaviors, allowing you to

• Target marketing efforts: design campaigns tailored to specific user groups for higher relevance and effectiveness

• Analyze behavior over time: track how different cohorts interact with your product, identifying trends and opportunities

• Improve retention strategies: understand the needs of various user segments to enhance satisfaction and loyalty

✍️ Check out our article on Mixpanel Cohorts

Bookmark this glossary if

• You want to build better products faster

• You’re looking for ways to increase conversions on web and mobile applications

• You need to improve your user engagement to retain more users

• You feel overwhelmed by the variety of KPIs and need to decide which metrics to track