Start from decisions, not events
The default approach is to install a tool, enable everything, and hope insight emerges. It produces dashboards nobody uses, because no question was asked.
Write the decisions you expect to make — which step to fix, which feature to invest in, which channel to fund — and instrument backwards from those. You will collect less and use far more of it.
Design the schema before implementing
Event names and properties invented ad hoc across a team become unusable within months: three names for the same action, inconsistent casing, properties present sometimes.
Agree a naming convention and a small set of shared properties up front, and document it. Renaming events later rarely happens, so the first convention is usually permanent.
Measure outcomes, not activity
Page views and sessions describe traffic, not value. Instrument the actions that indicate the product did its job: the form submitted, the report exported, the second visit, the renewal.
For each one, capture enough context to segment it. An outcome you cannot break down by source, device, or cohort answers only the most general question.
Define each metric once
Two teams will otherwise arrive at different numbers for the same thing, and the resulting meeting will be about reconciliation rather than about the decision.
One written definition per metric, with a named owner and a note of what it deliberately excludes. This is the least technical and most valuable step.
Respect privacy by design
Collect what you need and no more. Personal data in an analytics platform creates obligations that are easy to acquire accidentally and tedious to unwind, particularly when the data has been forwarded to other tools.
Decide retention deliberately rather than accepting a default that keeps everything forever.
Check that it works, repeatedly
Tracking breaks silently during releases, and nobody notices until a report looks strange weeks later. Add tracking to release checks, and monitor event volumes for sudden drops.
A metric that quietly stopped recording is worse than one that was never implemented, because decisions are still being made on it.