[dntrkv]

> couldn’t you still measure that by checking the backend and looking for a spike in activity towards the API endpoint that the UI invokes?

You could have multiple UIs hitting the same endpoint. Also, why limit yourself with such crude metrics?

> good UX doesn’t so much rely on Google Analytics but on a UX engineer’s depth of knowledge about human psychology

UX in theory, and UX in application are two different things. You could have the best models of how users will interact with your site, but until you deploy and measure, you have no idea what will happen.

[mqrs]

You can still parameterizethe API calls if you want to attribute user activity to a specific flow, and that way you wouldn’t be “feeding the beast” that is GA.

[viraptor]

How you mark/report the events is different from where you report them. You could use any one of self-hosted solutions on your own domain instead of GA without changing much the way you report back.