Field note · 2026-02-04
What a Useful Event Inventory Looks Like
An event list is not a trophy. It is a working agreement about which visitor actions matter for the journeys you care about.
Many customer-facing applications accumulate events the way a workshop accumulates spare screws: each made sense when it was added, and few people remember why.
A useful inventory starts with journeys, not with vendor feature lists. For each journey, list the decisions a visitor must make and the screens where those decisions happen. Only then assign event names, properties, and owners.
Name events for the visitor action, not the component. “clicked_blue_button_v2” ages poorly. “selected_shipping_option” survives redesigns and still means something in a readout six months later.
Include a retirement column. Events without an owner and without a journey reference become noise that slows every future analysis. Retiring them is part of keeping behavior work honest.