Tracking what matters: how to choose and monitor Mixpanel events

To get the most actionable user insights from Mixpanel, you have to track the right events. But how do you determine which Mixpanel events to track? And once you've identified them, how do you track them?

Whether you're just getting started with Mixpanel or looking to fine-tune your existing implementation, tracking the right metrics for your product helps you understand your customers, spot product usage trends, predict results, and make informed decisions.

This chapter dives into 15 essential Mixpanel events you should be tracking to help you unlock valuable customer insights that drive retention, engagement, and conversion.

What are Mixpanel events?

Mixpanel events are meaningful actions a user performs in a digital product, app, or website. For example, events can be triggered when users create an account, complete an order, download an app, or share a link.

Events are what make the Mixpanel world go around. The platform relies on real-time events to collect and analyze user behavior. By tracking events, you get detailed insight into user actions to tailor your messaging, figure out what features are working—and which ones need tweaking—and develop a better user experience.

Mixpanel events help you understand your customers, spot product usage trends, predict results, and make informed decisions about optimization

🛠️ How Mixpanel events work

Events, users, and properties are the foundation of Mixpanel’s event-based model. Before we get into how to choose what events to track, let’s take a closer look at what elements exist in the analytics platform:

• Event: a data point that shows how a user and your product interact. Events can vary according to your business type and users' actions on your site, which affect the bottom line and move your mission forward. For example an exercise app might want to track pivotal events like ‘App Downloaded’, ‘Account Created’, or ‘Order Completed’.

• User: a person who has finished interacting with your product on the other side of an event. In Mixpanel, each user is distinct and can be tracked according to the events they’ve triggered.

• Property: properties are attributes that log any type of data you might later want to associate with an event. Properties can be associated with a single event, or super properties can be associated with all events sent by a user.

• Profile: this feature connects profile properties with individual users. By creating a user profile, you can store user information like email, gender, age, and when they sign up. Create segments for profiles with similar characteristics and target them with specific campaigns.

• Custom events: these attributes allow you to define a group of users based on existing events and properties, and then integrate that group into Mixpanel reports. For example, you can combine 2 versions of the same event to view trends over time or merge 2 events into one—like ‘User Signup’ + ‘Account Created‘ → ‘Sign up’.

• Events properties: as the name suggests, this attribute describes an event—like a purchase, item type, or price.

• User properties: this attribute offers information about a user. This could be something as simple as a user’s name or age, or something more complex like their most used feature.

Essential Mixpanel events to track to increase conversions

The right Mixpanel events framework sets you up for success as you build and improve your user experience. What that looks like depends on your specific goals.

There’s no single set of events that works for everyone. Businesses and products are all unique and have different objectives and ideas of success from one another. With those differences in mind, we’ve crafted 2 framework examples to help you find the right events for your needs:

1. How to track events in Mixpanel as a SaaS business

2. How to track events in Mixpanel as an ecommerce business 

How to track events in Mixpanel as a SaaS business 

This list is a good starting point for the events you should track if you’re running or working for a SaaS business.

For example, let's say you’re working on a B2B web application and building a tracking plan to get started in Mixpanel. You've decided the most important metric for your business is revenue, so you'll start by addressing a goal related to that, building a user flow, and then selecting items to track.

One of the main metrics you’ll be looking at is sign-ups and logins, which should include specific events and user properties like:

• Request Demo: this event is triggered when a user requests a demo of your product

• Sign Up Started: setting up this event helps you pinpoint when a user begins the sign-up process. You could define a specific user property like ‘Sign Up Date’.

• Sign Up Completed: use this data to identify when a user successfully signs up and to track paid accounts. Examples of relevant user properties include ‘Enabled Permissions’, or ‘Payment Methods Added’. 

• Login Completed: this event is used to define when a user successfully logs in for the first time

Another important aspect will be reporting and plan management, which could include events and properties such as:

• View Report: set up this event for when a user either views a report or deliberately runs a query in your product. This lets you track key performance indicators (KPIs) like customer retention. Some useful event properties could include the ‘Entry Point’, the ‘Report Name’, and whether it’s a ‘Saved Report’ or a ‘Dashboard Report’.

• Support Ticket Submitted: keep track of when users submit a support ticket so you can address critical issues. Properties like ‘Ticket Description’ and ‘Ticket Type’ could be useful here.

• Change Plan: you might want to know when a user has changed their company plan and payment has been processed. To do so, make sure you include event properties like ‘Plan Change’, ‘Old/New Company Plan Type’, and ‘Old/New Total Contract Value’, and user properties such as ‘Company Plan Type’, ‘Company Plan Duration’, and ‘Total Contract Value’.

• Cancel Plan: another critical event to track is when a user has canceled their company plan through the website or app. Properties that may be useful include ‘Cancellation Type’, ‘Cancellation Reason’, and ‘Company Plan Duration’.

💡Pro tip: use Contentsquare’s Surveys capability to get user feedback at critical moments—like when a user downgrades their plan.

Ask them about their experience by triggering an on-site survey when they complete a key action in your product. Here’s what a basic flow might look like:

1. A user downgrades their subscription from ‘Premium’ to ‘Plus’ and triggers the 'Premium Subscription Downgrade' Mixpanel event 

2. Create a survey and send it to users who downgraded using Contentsquare

3. Use your survey findings to learn more about their needs, what’s causing friction, and build improved experiences that prevent revenue loss

Contentsquare’s Surveys capability helps you get more detailed feedback throughout the user journey

How to track events in Mixpanel as an ecommerce business

Delivering an exceptional ecommerce user experience means consistently exceeding customer needs and improving website conversions. Event tracking helps you understand whether your visitors love their experience so far, and validates whether you’re adding value.

Here’s what a Mixpanel event framework might look like for an online retail or ecommerce business:

• Searched from Homepage: setting up this event helps you track when a visitor completes a search from your website’s homepage. Adding event properties such as ‘Search Term’, ‘Search Category’, and ‘Suggestion Clicked’ helps you go even more in-depth.

• Search Filtered: when users filter their search results, you can set up a trigger for each category, along with properties such as ‘Filter Category’, ‘Filter Option Selected’, or ‘Number of Results’.

• Item Detail Page Viewed: this event lets you closely track what online shoppers do on your product pages. Make sure to include event properties such as ‘Item ID’, ‘Price’, ‘Item Name’, and ‘Currency’.

• Item Added to Cart: track when a customer adds an item to their shopping cart by adding event properties like ‘Item ID’, ‘Price’, ‘Item Name’, ‘Quick Add Selected’, ‘Quantity’, and ‘Currency’.

• Cart Viewed: customers often take a while to decide if they should make a purchase. Track this behavior by adding event properties that describe ‘Number of Items in Cart’, ‘Item IDs’, ‘Item Names’, and ‘Subtotal’, and then send abandoned cart emails.

• View Checkout: reaching the checkout page could be an important step in your Mixpanel Funnels. Track this event by including additional properties such as ‘Estimated Shipping’, ‘Estimated Tax’, or ‘Order total’.

• Purchase Completed: including this event can help you track relevant KPIs—like weekly active buyers (WAB), average purchase price, time to conversion, or retention. You should include specific event and user properties like ‘Payment Method’, ‘Gift Card Used’, ‘Signed Up For Emails’, ‘Order Total’, or ‘Coupon Code’.

 💡Pro tip: leverage Contentsquare’s Session Replay capability to see what’s happening behind the scenes on key Mixpanel events.

Watch back sessions related to drop-off events to understand what’s causing issues in the user journey. Add filters, such as rage clicks, to watch replays of frustrated user actions to identify opportunities to improve their experience.

Contentsquare’s Session Replay capability can help spot quick UX fixes and show errors that could be causing drop offs

How to decide which Mixpanel events to track

Before you start setting up Mixpanel events and tracking every single mouse click or tap, there are a few things to help you choose events that are most relevant to your goals. 

A little work upfront before your implementation will pay off down the line when you access the metrics you need. That way, you can fine-tune your users’ experience to ensure they get the most out of your digital product, app, or website.

Here’s how to start building your Mixpanel tracking plan:

• Identify your business goals: identify what you hope to accomplish through tracking to improve your business or product

• Think about user behavior: define the ideal path you would expect a user to follow within the product

• Consider the data you need: map that path to events and properties that describe common user flows

💡Pro tip: forgot to track an important event? Use Contentsquare’s clicked element filter to refine your event data and discover insights.

Mixpanel charges per event, so it’s unlikely you’ll be tracking every action users take in your product. This can lead to an unfortunate—but, let’s face it, common—situation where you realize too late you should’ve been tracking something you weren’t.

Fortunately, Contentsquare’s Clicked Element filter has you covered. It automatically tracks clicks on call-to-action (CTA) buttons or link texts and refines your session data accordingly, without needing to set up events in your code manually. 

Use this feature to quickly validate an assumption or identify issues relating to clicked elements without needing extra code, a developer’s input, or wishing you could go back in time and add another Mixpanel event.

Contentsquare’s clicked element filter lets you refine your session data further

Next steps with Mixpanel

Setting up your Mixpanel events framework is crucial, but that's only the beginning. Once you've determined your goals, metrics, and events to track user activity, the next step is to understand the meaning behind it all. 

Pairing an experience intelligence platform like Contentsquare with Mixpanel gives you a more detailed understanding of user behavior with insights that show you what’s happening behind the numbers.

FAQs about Mixpanel events