What is Crash Reporting in Analytics? Examples of Crash Reporting

Crash reporting

Crash reporting captures and analyzes application failures, providing insights to fix bugs and improve user experience.

What is Crash Reporting?

• Crash vs error

  An ‘error’ can be any issue during code execution, while a ‘crash’ is an unhandled error that forces termination or severe malfunction of the app.

• Crash reporting in analytics

  Unlike traditional event tracking, crash reporting specifically targets failures that interrupt the normal user flow and require developer attention.

Why Crash Reporting Matters

• Improve reliability

  Crash data reveals hidden bugs so you can address them before they affect more users.

• Enhance user experience

  By swiftly fixing crashes, you reduce user frustration and churn.

• Prioritize issues

  Frequency and severity metrics help determine which crashes to tackle first.

How Crash Reporting Works

• Error detection

  Client-side scripts catch unhandled exceptions and fatal errors automatically.

• Data transmission

  Error payloads are sent via HTTP or SDK protocols to the analytics backend.

• Aggregation & alerting

  Dashboards group crashes by root cause, and alerts notify teams in real time.

Implementing Crash Reporting with Plainsignal

• Setup plainsignal script

  Add the PlainSignal tracking code in your head section to initialize analytics and enable crash reporting.

  • Script snippet:

    <link rel="preconnect" href="//eu.plainsignal.com/" crossorigin />
    <script defer data-do="yourwebsitedomain.com" data-id="0GQV1xmtzQQ" data-api="//eu.plainsignal.com" src="//cdn.plainsignal.com/PlainSignal-min.js"></script>
    

• Capture and track errors

  Use the PlainSignal SDK API to listen for JavaScript errors and send crash information.

  • Error tracking code:

    <script>
    window.addEventListener("error", function(event) {
      PlainSignal.trackError({
        message: event.message,
        filename: event.filename,
        line: event.lineno,
        column: event.colno,
        stack: event.error ? event.error.stack : null
      });
    });
    </script>
    

Implementing Crash Reporting with GA4

• Setup ga4 base code

  Initialize GA4 on your site by adding the global site tag in your head section.

  • Ga4 initialization:

    <!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
    <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=GA_MEASUREMENT_ID"></script>
    <script>
      window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
      function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
      gtag('js', new Date());
      gtag('config', 'GA_MEASUREMENT_ID');
    </script>
    

• Capture and log exceptions

  Listen for errors in the browser and send them to GA4 as exception events.

  • Exception tracking code:

    <script>
    window.addEventListener("error", function(event) {
      gtag('event', 'exception', {
        description: event.message,
        fatal: false
      });
    });
    </script>
    

Best Practices for Crash Reporting

• Filter and aggregate

  Group similar crashes by signature (stack trace) to reduce noise and focus on unique issues.

• Add contextual metadata

  Include user IDs, session data, and device information to accelerate debugging.

• Set alert thresholds

  Configure alerts for high-severity or high-frequency crashes to respond quickly.

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