Pile of spaghetti 🍝 or orderly file cabinet? 🗂

Claire here today 🙌 I’m dropping in to share a topic we’ve been discussing behind-the-scenes, and to hopefully hear from you on this topic, too.

Our topic this week is naming conventions for your user events, properties, and segments.

Since Userlist is a tool for observing your users’ behavior, and triggering communication based on that behavior… it becomes very important to think carefully about how your users’ details are defined.

Properties, events, and segments that follow a standard naming convention are easy to analyze. However, most founders and teams don’t take the time to set up a standard naming convention — which results in a hodgepodge of events that are difficult to scan or remember.

For example, it’s completely possible that two developers working on a product could implement different naming conventions, at different times. Later, you might find yourself trying to make sense of messy event names that sound almost identical, like “signup” and “User Signed Up.”

Which one do you pay attention to? How do you know it’s the right one? When a clear framework isn’t established at the outset, this issue can crop up at even the most data-driven organizations (speaking from experience here).

Not only do we want to provide a solid tool, we also want to ensure that future users organize their data in the clearest possible way. And we can’t do that by simply dictating our opinion — we need yours, too!

So we’d love to know: how do you name your user events, properties, and segments?

Do you have a style guide or strong naming convention in place, so analyzing user data feels like sorting through a nice, orderly file cabinet? If so, how did you come up with your rules, and ensure everyone followed them?

Or… does reviewing user data feel more like looking at a plate of spaghetti? If so, what happened?

Looking forward to hearing your experience with this!

— Claire