Analytics: why your app needs a tracker before launch

Analytics is the single heaviest check in the audit — weight 16 of 172 — because without it you're launching blind: no idea if anyone visits, where they come from, or where they leave.

What Actuant checks

Actuant scans your rendered HTML for two tiers of tracking:

• Direct product/behavioural trackers (~30 of them): Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, PostHog, Plausible, Fathom, Umami, Vercel Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Heap, Segment, Hotjar, FullStory, LogRocket, Pendo, Datadog RUM, Matomo, Microsoft Clarity, Yandex Metrica, and more. Any one of these means pass.
• Tag managers and marketing pixels: Google Tag Manager, Adobe Launch, Tealium, Meta / TikTok / LinkedIn / Bing / Pinterest / Reddit / Snapchat pixels. These alone score partial — the plumbing is there, but no first-party product analytics was seen.

Why it matters

Every launch decision — is the headline landing, is anyone signing up, which channel works — depends on data you only have if a tracker is running from day one. Retrofitting analytics after launch means the first, most informative week of traffic is gone forever.

How to fix it

Add a lightweight tracker — it's one script tag.

1. 1

   Pick a tracker

   PostHog (product analytics + session replay, generous free tier), Plausible (simple, privacy-first), or Vercel Analytics (one click if you're on Vercel).

2. 2

   Add the snippet

   Drop the script into your document head. In Lovable/Bolt/v0, add it via the head/settings panel or a layout component; in Next.js, use the analytics component or a <Script> tag.

3. 3

   Verify

   Load your own site, then re-run the audit. Actuant reads the rendered DOM, so a runtime-injected tracker still counts.

<script defer src="https://us.i.posthog.com/static/array.js"></script>
<script>
  posthog.init('phc_your_project_key', { api_host: 'https://us.i.posthog.com' })
</script>