NotebookBloom: Why I stopped treating “installed” as activation

NotebookBloom: I was measuring installs when I should have been measuring first value

One uncomfortable lesson from this week: an install is distribution, not activation.

My Chrome extension analytics could tell me when an export succeeded, but almost nothing about the people who never got that far. That made every product decision guesswork.

So I mapped the smallest useful funnel:
extension_open → panel_open → feature_selected → action_started → success / failed

I’m deliberately keeping it small. No heatmaps and no user content—just anonymous steps, version, feature, method and success/failure counts.

The next experiment is to compare three rates after release:

1. open → panel
2. panel → action started
3. action started → success

Whichever step leaks most gets the next product iteration. That feels much more useful than celebrating a larger install number with no idea what happened afterward.

If you run a browser extension, what event do you use as activation?

NotebookBloom: https://notebookbloom.com

#buildinpublic #indiehacking #analytics #chromeextension