Heap Tracking: How to Analyze In-App Events (+Alternatives)

If you want to get the data you need without having to collect it first, Heap tracking features can capture in-app events automatically and make retroactive analysis a breeze.

But is Heap the best choice for your product management needs?

Let’s explore:

• The types of events Heap can track and how to set them up.
• The main analytics tools Heap offers and how to use them effectively.
• The pros and cons of Heap, and when it might be time to consider an alternative.

TL;DR

• Heap tracks a variety of data in two ways:

1. Auto capture: Automatically records events like clicks, page views, sessions, and user properties without manual tagging.
2. Manually-tracked events: Allows for the tracking of more granular events through manual setups like snapshots and client-side APIs.

• Heap provides multiple analytics tools, including:

1. Charts: Visualize user behavior and product performance through various chart types like funnels, journeys, engagement, and retention.
2. Pages: Analyze individual page performance with metrics like pageviews, time on page, bounce rate, and exit rate.
3. Users: Filter and analyze user segments based on demographic, behavioral, and active usage properties.
4. Sessions: Examine session data to understand user interactions during specific sessions, including session replays and event filtering.

• Heap has several strengths, but it also has limitations. Here’s what its pros and cons are:

1. Pros: Autocapture events, user-friendly interface, real-time data, and advanced data science capabilities.
2. Cons: Difficult customization, limited qualitative insights, integration difficulties, and potential data accuracy issues when scaling.

• Consider a Heap alternative if:

1. You require an all-in-one platform for product management.
2. You need to gather qualitative data as well.
3. Your team would benefit more from a no-code solution
4. The budget isn’t high enough to complement Heap with other platforms.

• Since Userpilot is an all-in-one product management platform that doesn’t require any coding skills, why not book a free demo to see how your team can perform retroactive analysis?

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Types of events in Heap tracking

Tracking different types of user interactions is table stakes for any product analytics platform.

So how diverse is the data you can collect with Heap?

For this, we need to go over the two main types of event tracking in Heap and look at the data you can gather with them:

Auto capture

Heap starts tracking data by default right after you install it on either web or mobile apps. It stores it with default labels and properties that can’t be modified, so to use it properly, you need to make copies of the data you want and add custom labels.

That said, here is the type of data you can record with auto-capture:

• Click events: Includes all click interactions on your site, including buttons, links, as well as rage clicks.
• Change events: Changes in the values of inputs, text, and element selection.
• Form submission events: Records when users submit forms, capturing the data entered and the form’s success or failure.
• Pageviews: When users navigate to different pages within your product, illustrating the user navigation flow.
• Sessions: The start and end of user sessions, including the duration and any specific session-based events.
• User properties: Shows the user’s ID, device, browser, and specific location.

Note: To install Heap, apply advanced configuration, or if you simply have a content security policy (CSP), you’ll need to add specific scripts and probably require assistance from your dev team.

Manually-tracked events

Heap’s autocapture can’t track data such as searches made by users, feature interactions, or the properties of a product that was added to a cart—so you need to set them up manually.

Heap can do this with two features:

• Snapshots: Adds custom metadata to in-app events that can’t be captured automatically (such as the text added in a form). It’s useful for client-side events, but the data isn’t retroactive and is only supported on web installations.

• Manual event tracking: Use Heap’s client-side API to manually track events, which is available in all Heap client SDKs.

Note: Both of these manual tracking methods require adding scripts and managing CSS code, so you might require technical assistance from the dev team to implement them effectively.

Main analytics tools of Heap

Heap provides a variety of analytics tools to help you visualize and interpret the data collected—making it easier to make data-driven decisions.

Here are the tools you get access to:

Charts

Heap’s charting features allow you to visualize user behavior and product performance data in one place.

There are many charts available, each with unique purposes. They include:

• Usage over time: Tracks the app usage of any event, user segment, or property, and creates a visual of their trends over time.
• Funnels: Breaks down the steps users take toward completing a goal, allowing you to analyze conversion rates and drop-offs at each stage.
• Journeys: Visualizes customers’ digital journeys in your app, providing actionable insights into common navigational flows and defining the happy path.
• Engagement: It shows in a scatter plot how users perform different events in your app, helping you identify which areas of your app are most engaging.
• Acquisition: Groups customer acquisition sources by specific properties (e.g. marketing channels) to compare and analyze which sources bring in the most valuable users.
• Retention: Tracks how well you retain users over time, identifying potential issues that lead to churn.
• Influence: Illustrates the impact of certain actions, channels, or features on desired results (e.g. upsells, engagement, etc.), helping you prioritize the development of high-impact features.
• Heatmap analysis. Provides a visual representation of what users do on your site. Including what they click, how they scroll, and mouse movements.

Pages

Heap’s Pages chart provides a detailed analysis of user interaction with individual pages on your site. It shows how effectively your pages are performing and where there might be room for improvement.

That said, here are the key metrics you can analyze within Heap’s Pages tool:

• Pageviews: The total number of times a page is viewed. High page views indicate popular content or a high interest in a particular area of your site.
• Total sessions: The total number of sessions in which a group of pages was viewed. It helps you understand how often users are engaging with that page during their visits.
• Time on page: Measures the average amount of time users spend on a page. Longer times suggest that the content has higher user engagement.
• Bounce rate: The percentage of sessions that begin and end on the same page without further interaction. A high bounce rate could indicate that the page isn’t engaging enough.
• Exit rate: The percentage of sessions that end after viewing a particular page. Depending on the page, a high exit rate might either suggest that the user’s needs were met on the page (e.g. a thank you page) or that they’re experiencing friction that prevents them from continuing (e.g. the checkout page).
• Landings: The number of times a page is the first one users visit during their session. It helps identify which pages you need to optimize for better user engagement.

Users

Heap’s user filtering options allow you to browse through specific segments of your user base and look at their data, in-app behaviors, and even watch replays of their sessions.

You can filter your user base based on four properties:

• Segment: Filter users who are inside or outside of a specific segment.
• Demographic properties: Filter users based on demographic characteristics like ID, platform, location, or device type. This helps you tailor your product features or marketing strategies to specific audience segments.
• Behavioral properties: Filter users based on their actions within your app, such as completing a purchase, clicking a particular button, or abandoning a cart. This allows you to analyze user behavior and optimize conversion rates.
• Active usage properties: Filters users with varying levels of activity, such as performing an event for the first time, or re-engaging with it. This lets you design retention strategies to keep users engaged or re-engage those who have dropped.

Sessions

In Heap, sessions can be browsed just like users. It allows you to look closely at the events that happened during a session, its duration, watch a replay, and filter your sessions based on different properties, including:

• Data range: Allows you to browse sessions that happened in a specific period (e.g. during a marketing campaign).
• Users: Shows sessions that were performed by specific users (e.g. a segment, behavior, demographic, etc).
• Event: Filters the sessions based on the type of events that happened in there (e.g. a purchase, an activation milestone, etc).

Pros and cons of Heap tracking

Now, are Heap tracking tools the best for you? Depends.

Let’s go over Heap’s pros and cons based on what its users say on G2—and see whether Heap is the right solution for your needs or if you should consider alternatives.

Pros of Heap tracking

As expected, many Heap users have highlighted several benefits that make it a strong contender in the analytics space.

Here’s what it excels at:

• Ease of setup with auto-capture: Heap’s auto-capture feature automatically tracks user interactions without requiring manual event tagging. This makes it easier to get up and running quickly, especially for teams with limited technical resources.
• Intuitive interface: Heap’s interface is easy to navigate. Even non-technical users can effectively use the platform, reducing the need for extensive training or onboarding.

• Powerful analytics tools: Heap’s suite of analytics tools (such as funnels, journeys, and retention analysis) provides robust capabilities for digging into user data and getting actionable insights. These are great for any product manager who needs to optimize user experiences and improve conversion rates.
• Real-time data availability: One of Heap’s key strengths is its ability to monitor data 24/7, allowing teams to respond quickly to emerging trends or issues.

Cons of Heap tracking

Despite its pros, Heap users have also expressed some weaknesses in the product during their experiences.

Those cons include:

• Customization challenges: While Heap’s auto-capture is convenient, advanced customization can be challenging. Development resources are often required for complex tracking needs, such as adding custom metadata or tracking non-standard events.

• Limited integrations: Heap has fewer built-in integrations with other tools. This can make it more difficult to incorporate Heap into your existing tech stack, potentially requiring additional work to connect with other tools or export data for use elsewhere.
• Steep learning curve for advanced features: While the basic features of Heap are user-friendly, some users find that there is a steeper learning curve when it comes to using Heap’s more advanced analytics tools effectively.

• Lack of qualitative insights: While Heap excels at quantitative data collection and analysis, it offers limited tools for gathering qualitative data, such as user feedback or in-app surveys. This limitation means you need to use additional tools to analyze user sentiment.
• Occasional data accuracy issues when scaling: Some users have reported concerns about data accuracy, particularly when integrating Heap with other tools or managing a complete dataset with the auto-capture feature. This means ensuring that the data captured is accurate and reliable may require additional validation acrobatics to get around.

Why do you need a Heap alternative?

As we saw, Heap is a powerful analytics tool, but it’s not the perfect fit for every company.

There are several scenarios where you might need to consider a Heap alternative, especially when your requirements extend beyond what Heap can offer. These include:

• Limited development resources: If your team has limited development resources to assist you with advanced tracking, custom events, and integrations. Then, a user-friendly, no-code platform would be more suitable.
• Budget constraints: Heap’s pricing can become too high for teams with tight budgets due to the session limits.
• Need for both qualitative and quantitative data: Despite excelling in quantitative data, Heap offers limited tools for gathering qualitative data. So, you might need to consider other options or add another product to collect qualitative feedback.
• All-in-one solution for data integrity: Heap requires you to export data to other platforms. This means it won’t be a fit if you need an all-in-one platform where you can collect data and leverage it in actual strategies (e.g. targeted in-app campaigns).

Userpilot: A better alternative to Heap analytics

Userpilot is a comprehensive, user-friendly alternative that addresses all of Heap’s limitations.

It’s a platform designed specifically for product teams. It provides a full suite of tools to help you engage users and improve the entire digital experience—not just analytics.

Here’s why Userpilot can be better for your business:

• All-in-one platform for product teams: Userpilot isn’t just an analytics tool; it’s almost the only digital insights platform that’s also designed to support every other aspect of product management.
• Qualitative and quantitative data collection: Unlike Heap, Userpilot seamlessly combines qualitative insights—like user feedback and surveys—with quantitative data, giving you a more holistic view of user behaviors.
• Intuitive auto-capture: Userpilot’s autocapture feature doesn’t require any technical expertise. It’s set on by default and you can easily search for events and label them without coding anything.

• No-code dashboards and reports: There’s a wide range of customizable dashboards and reports, all of which are completely no-code. This allows non-technical team members to leverage data without needing to rely on developers.
• Engagement capabilities: It includes tools for creating interactive guides, in-app announcements, and personalized user experiences—all of which can be directly triggered with the data you collect.

Conclusion

Heap tracking and analytics capabilities are robust, making it a popular choice for many product managers.

However, it may not meet the needs of every team, especially when it comes to customization, qualitative data collection, and user engagement.

If you are looking for an all-in-one product management platform that doesn’t require any coding skills, book a free demo to get started.

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