Web Analytics Public Beta To-Do List

[robbie-c]

This is the list of work to be done before Web Analytics is to move from opt-in beta to default-on beta, appearing in the UI for all or most customers.

This list is open to change, and I'd love any feedback.

Must-haves

• Performance good enough for large customers
  • Design session table
  • Write session table backfill script
  • Run session backfill
  • Use hogql to limit date range of session queries
  • Update web analytics queries to use sessions
  • Add session-based filters
• Any architectural changes that break data continuity
• Make it easier to separate sites - Create a new "My Sites" scene #12181
• Make decision on whether we want to continue to call it "web analytics"
• Fix async queries (internal thread https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C05LJK1N3CP/p1707844028504349 )

Should-haves

• Live online users count
• Show time of last refresh, rate-limit refreshing
• Visual regression tests

Could-haves

• Add chart showing time of day that users visit (two tabs, one for your TZ, one for user TZ)
• Set all queries to use the exact same time period
• Group devices by width/height tuples
• Add % of total for devices and geography tab
• Add link to definitions in the docs
• Help people figure out if they have their internal / test filters set up incorrectly
• Top clicks for people with autocapture set up
• Solve the technical difficulties prevent us from filtering on channel type
• Improve UX on mobile devices e.g. https://posthoghelp.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/10625
• LCP/page load for paths

Won't-haves (possibly will be done in the future)

• Integration with google search console
• Add Conversion goals
• Hide incomplete periods from graphs
• Improve the UX around searching for a path
• Add a flag to posthog-js to enable sensible defaults for web analytics
• Use the paths insight, shows which paths are best at converting
• Ad attribution postback
• Pulling in data from ads to measure CAC
• Exporting data (e.g. as CSV)
• Figure out how to make sessions span domains, see https://github.com/PostHog/product-internal/pull/531
• Public dashboards

Historical

• Add a simpler tab to the sources section which just lists Direct/Organic Search/Paid Aggregate traffic channels by broad category, e.g. paid social, organic search, etc #18713
• Path cleaning rules for web analytics - Path cleaning for web-analytics #19237
• Add a status check, which warns if analytics are not configured correctly (e.g. not sending pageleave / pageview)
• Graphs should have a configurable interval
• Graphs should show actual dates, not "day 0"
• Add retention chart
• convert browsers/device type to pie chart possible side-quest: improve the pie chart, see history of this Revamp pie chart UI for Insights #4403 Skeleton loading states for charts #5411 Convert charts to D3 #4568 https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+pie+charts
• Make localStorage+cookie the default persistence posthog-js#876
• (with help of other teams) create web analytics ingestion pipeline, without persons/PoE, without custom properties, no custom events only pageviews/pageleaves and some conversion goals (converted to non-goal)
• (with help of other teams) Create product page on the website and documentation. Tracking questions here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FNxjoPO4rloFsDnureNh24fhMjdD8FQXslRaSFvrnb8/edit
• button to refresh, refresh time
• Ability to save/bookmark filters
• Larger / full screen view for tables and graphs
• Make "Top pages" wider, include Time on Page, Average Scroll Depth

Feedback form feature requests

• Convert to a "real" dashboard
• Be able to open urls
  * Path cleaning
• Sites
• Ability to schedule reports, as you can do with dashboards.
• Ability to add a link to a filtered view to a notebook or dashboard.
• Ability to save a snapshot of the web analytics page as a PDF.
• See user information (e.g. have the visitors count be clickable)
• More time period options, like YOY or MOM
• see the exact(or exactish) location of users pinpointed on a world map., like Shopify Black Friday
• Comparisons of Month over Month of the different categories like UTM source, etc
• See cost of customers in posthog through ad integration
• Add example session replays

Previous issue: #18177