We spent 2018 working hard to ship features that help you use Mixpanel most effectively, and launching programs that help keep us even more connected to our customers and partners. In case you missed them, we’re here to share some highlights from the past year.

Earlier this year, we kicked off the “Summer of Shipping”. Summer has come and gone, but the momentum of our engineering and product teams has continued to grow. In fact, take a look at our total “deploys” (aka anytime we shipped code that changed something in Mixpanel). Overall, we shipped 45% more updates than last year.

You’re probably wondering what caused this sharp increase? We spent significant resources in early 2018 on migrating the parts of our infrastructure that ingest data, to Google Cloud Platform, a move that gives us flexibility in scaling to meet the needs of our largest customers, without sacrificing speed or performance. In addition, our infrastructure team worked to implement vectorization and predicate pushdown, to help our query engine complete complicated queries faster, and deliver a more cost-efficient experience for our customers. Once completed, it freed up some of our engineers to work on the features and reports that you use every day.

Top releases of 2018

Now let’s revisit some of the top releases of 2018. We looked at our own Mixpanel data to see how many unique customers used each feature, to gauge which features were the most popular. Here they are:

1. Time period comparison in Insights
Compare time ranges–like this month compared to last month, or any previous 30 day period–in order to more clearly see how trends change over time. It’s super flexible, so you can choose a comparison period starting or ending on any date, in just a couple clicks.

2. Flows
We released a brand new report, Flows, which lets you explore how users navigate your product and where they drop-off from your funnel, so you can drive them towards the optimal paths. Features like the ability to add unlimited steps, filter by cohort, and exclude events, make it one of the most powerful reports on the market today.

3. Customizable dashboards
Further customize your dashboards so teams can digest the data quickly, by selecting the type of chart to feature on each card, dragging and dropping cards into a specific order, and re-sizing cards to show more, or less, of each chart. We’ve also added new visualizations that display a single metric or show the entire funnel.

4. Anomaly Explanations
Spend less time investigating the cause of each anomaly, now that Mixpanel automatically finds any key segments of users–like users on Android phones or in Mexico City–that are responsible for the change.

5. Lexicon
What good is your data if no one trusts it or knows what it means? New Lexicon releases, like display names, event category tags, and property definitions,  makes it even easier to keep your Mixpanel projects well-documented and organized, so anyone can understand what the data is telling them.

6. Recurring messages
In addition to one-time and sequential messages, you can set up recurring messages that drive users to take specific actions, every time they meet your criteria. For example, you may want to nudge users who abandon their cart to complete their purchase, with a targeted email. Choose how many times a user can get notified (or leave it unlimited), and Mixpanel will send a message every time there’s a match.

7. Global filter in Dashboards
Want to look at data for the last week, or just focus on new users? Simply filter the entire dashboard by a cohort, people property, or date range.

8. Formulas in Insights
Formulas in Insights makes it easy to calculate new metrics or KPIs and add them to your key reports. Let’s say you’re looking at total videos watched for the last 12 months. In just a couple of clicks, you can view average videos watched per hour, week, month, any increment you wish – all in the same chart.

9. Funnels: total conversions and time-to-convert
View total conversions in Funnels, to see how many total times a user converts during the designated time frame. For example, if someone completes multiple purchases in a single visit, you now have the option to view all those conversions, instead of just one. Plus, with the time-to-convert chart, you can see how long it takes users to finish any given Funnel step – whether its minutes, hours, or days. Spot the steps that slow users down as they move through a checkout flow, for example, and send them a reminder to nudge them along.

10. Signal: multiple correlation events, properties, and more.
We refreshed Signal with abilities to add multiple correlation events, filter and break down by property, and add cohorts as filters or goal events. These allow you to more easily zoom in on the actions that relate to your key business goals, so you know how to drive users towards your preferred events.

Programs and events

We launched several programs that help us integrate with new tech partners, and connect with solution partners to implement Mixpanel. Via the Mixpanel Technology Partner Program, companies can enrich their data and power other applications by building an integration with Mixpanel. Through our Solutions Partner Program, we partner with agencies who want to grow their business by providing analytics strategy and services to their clients. We also found a better way to make Mixpanel the best solution for startups and nonprofits.

Through our Beyond the Playbook roadshow, brought together experienced leaders from top companies like Instagram, Hulu, Mastercard and Shopify, to share how their experiment with different models and metrics to find deep user understanding and transform their business. Through a series of round table discussions, we connected like-minded customers and analytics professionals. They shared their strategies and learnings about how to best use data to make smarter decisions, and drive growth of their business.

Goodbye, 2018

Here we are, 9 trillion data points, 3,121 updates, and 87 features later. Thanks to all 26,000 customers who show us what to build next – either via their actions or direct feedback. We’re excited for all that’s to come next year.

For a more in depth review of everything we released this year, check out our #FeatureFriday series on Twitter, or visit the product updates section on our website.