Heap is a great analytics tool
What do you like best about the product?
My team has used Heap for product analytics about three years now and we've made good use of it. We review it constantly to improve our product. Here are some things that I think make Heap unique:
- Heap captures a lot of information about user events, so often tracking does not have to be thought out ahead of time.
- Heap's visual analyzer tool is wonderful at helping us look at any page in our product and knowing what our users do on that page.
- Heap provides some good high-level metrics to see how many unique users view our product.
- Heap has good exploration tools to find new problems and data points to study.
A couple of times we've had to reach out to Heap support, and we have received acceptable support in a reasonable amount of time. They were friendly to work with.
- Heap captures a lot of information about user events, so often tracking does not have to be thought out ahead of time.
- Heap's visual analyzer tool is wonderful at helping us look at any page in our product and knowing what our users do on that page.
- Heap provides some good high-level metrics to see how many unique users view our product.
- Heap has good exploration tools to find new problems and data points to study.
A couple of times we've had to reach out to Heap support, and we have received acceptable support in a reasonable amount of time. They were friendly to work with.
What do you dislike about the product?
Here are some of the things we've struggled with on Heap:
- The initial setup is simple and similar to other analytics tools. However, to get their visual analyzer tool to work, we had to do some extra steps that were a little tedious, and it was hard to detect when we had done them incorrectly.
- Because Heap tracks so much data, it is sometimes hard to find the event we're looking for and have even resorted to tracking events with their manual API. (Their manual API is so easy to use)
- Heap has a feature that tracks frustrations clicks, and I think that while it's a valid metric to track, it's really ambiguous to tell when we've fixed it (and trust me, we've tried).
- The initial setup is simple and similar to other analytics tools. However, to get their visual analyzer tool to work, we had to do some extra steps that were a little tedious, and it was hard to detect when we had done them incorrectly.
- Because Heap tracks so much data, it is sometimes hard to find the event we're looking for and have even resorted to tracking events with their manual API. (Their manual API is so easy to use)
- Heap has a feature that tracks frustrations clicks, and I think that while it's a valid metric to track, it's really ambiguous to tell when we've fixed it (and trust me, we've tried).
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Heap serves as our product analytics. It helps us find answers to many questions, including:
- What do users do in our product?
- Are users adopting new features?
- For our features that consume a lot of resources, what functionality do they use, and therefore which should we prioritize development on?
We benefit greatly from Heap. It often allows us to find answers when we ask them, and not just when we anticipate questions in the future. This saves us development time because we now spend less time instrumenting analytics in our product than before. And Heap's visual analyzer tool allows us to see how pages are used by our users.
- What do users do in our product?
- Are users adopting new features?
- For our features that consume a lot of resources, what functionality do they use, and therefore which should we prioritize development on?
We benefit greatly from Heap. It often allows us to find answers when we ask them, and not just when we anticipate questions in the future. This saves us development time because we now spend less time instrumenting analytics in our product than before. And Heap's visual analyzer tool allows us to see how pages are used by our users.