Been noticing some weird inconsistencies in our dashboard lately. Install numbers don’t match between platforms and our retention curves look off.
Starting to think our tracking setup might be messier than I thought. Anyone else dealt with data quality issues screwing up their growth analysis?
Same tracking provider everywhere or you’ll go crazy.
Usually messy UTM parameters too. Check if your links are tagged consistently across campaigns.
Retention curves being off is the bigger problem. Mismatched installs suck, but weird retention usually means your events are firing at the wrong times or you’re getting duplicates.
Double-check that your day 1 and day 7 events actually trigger when users open the app on those specific days. I’ve seen SDKs fire them early or late, which screws everything up.
Fix your retention data first. Then making growth decisions becomes way easier.
Data hygiene kills more growth efforts than bad creative or targeting. Most teams shrug at discrepancies and keep running blind. Start with server-side tracking validation. Compare backend user counts against what attribution platforms report. This delta shows where events are lost. Next, check conversion windows. Different platforms have varying default attribution windows, so align them or you’ll see mismatched numbers. Fix the foundation first. Don’t optimize anything else until this is sorted.
Had this exact problem scaling a dating app. Attribution was everywhere - Facebook claimed 1000 installs, Adjust showed 800, our backend logged 1200.
Found duplicate events firing, users opting out post-install, and postback URLs out of sync.
Took 3 weeks to audit but totally worth it. CAC dropped 30% once we trusted our numbers and optimized campaigns right.
Pick one traffic source and manually trace a few users from click → install → first session. You’ll spot the gaps fast.