Practical Examples & Case Studies
Practical Examples & Case Studies
Section titled “Practical Examples & Case Studies”This section contains real-world examples showing how to analyze marketing data, build funnels, investigate problems, and make data-driven decisions. Each case demonstrates specific principles and workflows in action.
All Cases
Section titled “All Cases”Analytics & Monitoring
Section titled “Analytics & Monitoring”Automatic capture of all landing pages without manual configuration. Shows how PostHog tracks every page users land on, not just designated landing pages.
Key Learning: Never need to ask “which pages should I track?” - the system shows everything automatically.
Exploration Workflows
Section titled “Exploration Workflows”Case 2: Landing Page → Users → Sessions Drill-Down
Section titled “Case 2: Landing Page → Users → Sessions Drill-Down”Natural exploration flow from aggregate data to individual user sessions. Click through from landing page metrics to see who visited and watch their session recordings.
Key Learning: Tools should support natural curiosity - clicking on data points should reveal the people behind the numbers.
Case 3: Exploring Individual User Properties & Events
Section titled “Case 3: Exploring Individual User Properties & Events”Deep dive into user profiles to discover properties, events, and user journeys. Learn the funnel structure by exploring real user event streams.
Key Learning: Don’t ask developers “what events do we have?” - just look at user data to discover the structure.
Funnel Analysis
Section titled “Funnel Analysis”Creating funnels from discovered events and immediately spotting problems. Build funnels with events you discovered yourself, spot 90% drop-off instantly.
Key Learning: The funnel will scream problems at you - 90% drop-off is not subtle.
From aggregate numbers (50,266 drop-offs) to individual investigation and pattern discovery. Every person in the drop-off has complete data you can investigate.
Key Learning: Numbers aren’t mysteries - 50k drop-offs means 50k specific people you can investigate.
Segmentation & Performance
Section titled “Segmentation & Performance”Case 6: Landing Page Performance Breakdown
Section titled “Case 6: Landing Page Performance Breakdown”Segmentation revealing massive performance differences: 22% vs 0% conversion rates. Pre-quiz pages convert 4.7x better than baseline.
Key Learning: Segmentation turns vague problems (“4.71% conversion”) into actionable insights (“pre-quiz pages convert at 22%”).
Multi-dimensional filtering finds 44% conversion rate - 4.5x better than baseline. Layer filters (landing page + affid + campaign) to isolate winners.
Key Learning: Same landing page performs differently based on traffic source. It’s about who you target, not just what you built.
Same page, different traffic = different results. Proves it’s an audience problem, not a page problem.
Key Learning: Good traffic converts well everywhere. Bad traffic struggles everywhere. Fix traffic first, optimize pages second.
Attribution & Revenue
Section titled “Attribution & Revenue”Attributing sales across multiple touchpoints - paid ads, SMS, email retargeting. 76% of sales require retargeting, but all attribute back to original campaign.
Key Learning: Always attribute to first-touch (original campaign), not last-touch. Without that original ad, you wouldn’t have leads to retarget.
Case 10: November 20th Sales Investigation
Section titled “Case 10: November 20th Sales Investigation”From question to answer in 1 minute - understanding event footprints and parameters. Reading parameters reveals SMS retargeting disguised as “Google Ads” sale.
Key Learning: Parameters are your attribution Bible. Surface labels lie, parameters tell the truth.
Cross-Validation
Section titled “Cross-Validation”Case 11: Cross-Validating Attribution Properties
Section titled “Case 11: Cross-Validating Attribution Properties”Real Slack conversation discovering which tracking properties are reliable. referring_domain wins (automatic), utm_source fails (91% null).
Key Learning: Not all tracking properties are equally reliable. Test what exists, use what works, ignore what doesn’t.
How to Use These Cases
Section titled “How to Use These Cases”-
Start with workflows that match your needs: Looking to understand funnels? Start with Cases 4-5. Need attribution? Go to Cases 9-11.
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Follow the natural progression: Cases 1-3 build foundation skills. Cases 4-8 show analysis techniques. Cases 9-11 demonstrate attribution.
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Reference principles: Each case links to specific principles from the Core Principles page.
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Apply to your data: These aren’t just examples - they’re workflows you can replicate in your own analytics.
Related Resources
Section titled “Related Resources”- Core Principles - Fundamental rules these cases demonstrate
- Thinking Flows - Step-by-step investigation processes
- Cross-Validation - How to validate data across systems
- Attribution & Tracking - Deep dive on attribution principles
Contributing Your Own Cases
Section titled “Contributing Your Own Cases”Have a real-world example that demonstrates these principles? Document it using the same format:
- Context: What was the starting situation?
- Process: What steps did you take?
- Discovery: What did you find?
- Insight: What did you learn?
- Principles: Which principles did this demonstrate?