In this installation of Community Spotlight, we will like to celebrate Sheena Green. Sheena is a champion of Amplitude at Mint Mobile, and more recently, a superuser here in our Amplitude community. Earlier this year, we sat down with Sheena to understand how she uses Amplitude, her journey with the tool, and some of the upcoming challenges she foresees for the Analytics ecosystem.
How are you using Amplitude within your current role and for how long have you been using it?
I’ve been using Amplitude for over 3 years. As my team’s primary tool for analyzing user behavior on our Web and App products, Amplitude helps us understand what resonates with our users so we can leverage these insights to ultimately drive engagement, conversions, and product loyalty. We’ve also had great success integrating Amplitude with other tools in our Martech stack, such as our CRO and email marketing platforms. This enables us to view the entire user journey when assessing the performance of these programs, and provides a deeper understanding of how different experiences impact user behavior.
How did you first get started on learning how to use Amplitude?
When I first got started, I leaned heavily on Amplitude’s documentation and I can’t say enough great things about it; it’s robust, comprehensive, and clearly written. It’s also regularly updated, so I always feel confident directing my colleagues to Amplitude’s Help center for detailed information and support when needed. Beyond that, the best way to learn is by using the tool yourself, so don’t be afraid to roll your sleeves up and dive in!
What are some challenges you foresee the Product Analytics ecosystem facing in the next 5 years?
As we move into a more privacy-centric, cookieless world, Product Analytics will face the obstacle of continuing to deliver meaningful insights using sampled, less exhaustive sets of data. I think leveraging technologies such as AI and machine learning is an interesting solution to this challenge and I’m eager to see where the community takes it. As analysts, we need tools that help us fill in the gaps as much as possible, and the ability to perform sophisticated and predictive modeling is what will differentiate the biggest players in the market.
Another challenge is enabling the right balance between data democratization and data governance. As Product Analytics ecosystems become more data-rich and holistic, it will become increasingly important to provide Admins with the ability to control user access and visibility at the micro-level. Without this, it is my opinion that data democratization and data governance cannot effectively coexist.
What is your favorite Amplitude chart or feature?
My favorite Amplitude chart type is the Funnel chart. Funnels not only provide insight into overall conversion rate, but also shed light on where and when drop-off occurs within the funnel. This has been incredibly powerful for surfacing product optimization opportunities and quantifying the impact our product updates have on funnel progression and other core KPIs. Additionally, the conversion over time feature allows us to monitor the health of our funnels on a daily basis so we can react in real-time if we notice significant changes in performance.
What is one piece of advice you have for users or teams who are just starting to use Amplitude?
While I understand the urge to move straight into implementation, I can’t stress enough the importance of data planning. You should have answers to the following before you begin - Will you use Amplitude’s API, SDKs, or a mix? How and when will you identify your users? What questions are you hoping to answer with Amplitude? What events, event properties, and user properties do you need to send to Amplitude in order to answer these questions? What taxonomy structure will you use for naming your custom events and properties? Remember, it takes more time and resources to go back and fix implementation issues (not to mention the headache this causes for data continuity), so it’s worth taking the time now to detail out your implementation plan and avoid redundant work in the future.
Lastly, get buy-in from stakeholders at the very beginning. Get them excited about the different insights and opportunities Amplitude can surface and use this excitement to drive prioritization and impact across your organization.
What features are you interested in that you haven’t yet had a chance to dive into?
I’m really looking forward to diving deeper into the Govern add-on to see how these features can help us scale and maintain our instrumentation, especially as my team expands to support additional brands and products within our organization.
Sheena is Director of Digital Insights and Analytics at Mint Mobile, a disruptive telecom company changing how people buy wireless service. In her role, she leads her team to architect, implement, and interpret user behavior analytics across the brand’s digital products. As an unyielding advocate for data culture, Sheena has effectively driven the implementation and wide-scale adoption of various analytics tools across the organization. She is passionate about helping business stakeholders uncover meaningful insights across diverse datasets and then transform these insights into impactful next steps. Additionally, Sheena specializes in measurement strategy and analysis of testing and optimization programs, leveraging both quantitative and qualitative data to surface the holistic user journey. When Sheena isn’t busy looking for answers to the “why’s” around user behavior, she can be found spending time with her family at the beach or curled up with a good book.
agree on the “data democratization and data governance cannot effectively coexist” part. Been kind of a mini struggle trying to juggle the best of these both worlds.
