Why built-in stats are not enough
Telegram will not tell you which ad brought a customer or at which step a person closed the chat. You have to collect that yourself by writing every meaningful user action into the bot's database. That is why analytics belongs in the development brief, not in a later add-on. Actions that were never recorded cannot be recovered afterwards.
For businesses in Tashkent and the regions this matters even more. A customer often sees an ad on Instagram, opens the bot and pays through Click or Payme. If those steps are not linked, sales sees a lead from the bot, while the marketer cannot tell which ad deserves the credit.
Which metrics you actually need
There is no point in counting everything. A short set that answers one question, whether the bot pays for itself, is enough to begin with:
- New users: how many people pressed Start in a given period.
- Source of each user: ad, Instagram, website, QR code, channel.
- Step-by-step completion: how many people reached each screen.
- Conversion to the target action: lead, order, booking, payment.
- Return rate: who came back and how soon.
- Blocks: how many people stopped the bot after a broadcast.
- Cost per lead from the bot: ad spend divided by the number of leads.
Traffic sources: tagged links
A link to a bot can carry a start parameter. When the bot launches, it reads that value and stores the source against the user. Each channel gets its own link: one for Meta Ads, one for the Instagram bio, one for an OLX listing, one for the QR code on packaging or in a shop.
If traffic comes from a website, record the event before the handoff: a click on an Open in Telegram button is sent to Google Analytics as a goal. Pixels do not run inside Telegram chats, so everything that happens after the click lives in your own event table.
The funnel inside the bot
Take a food delivery bot. The steps are start, category choice, cart, address, payment via Click or Payme, confirmation. Once you have a headcount for each step, the leak is obvious. The causes are usually simple: the form is too long, the phone number is requested too early, or a button label is unclear.
Change one step at a time and compare the periods before and after. If you rewrite the flow, the texts and the ad in one go, you will never know what made the difference.
Where to store events and how to read them
The basic structure is simple: an events table with a user ID, action name, timestamp, source and extra parameters. A report on top of it can be built in Looker Studio, Metabase or even Google Sheets when volumes are small.
Leads from the bot are worth passing to a CRM such as Bitrix24 or amoCRM. Then you see not only how many people got in touch but how many of them ended up buying. Collect personal data, phone numbers in particular, only with the person's consent and store it securely.
Common mistakes
The same problems show up from project to project:
- Treating the number of bot users as the main result instead of leads and sales.
- Leaving sources untagged, so all traffic merges into one stream.
- Ignoring sales that an operator closes by phone outside the bot.
- Looking at averages without splitting by ad channel.
- Changing the flow without noting the date, which makes comparison impossible.
Where to start with Telegram bot analytics
First choose one target action: a lead, an order or a booking. Then map the path to it step by step, write down the list of events and prepare tagged links for every channel. Reviewing the report once a week and making one or two decisions from it is enough.
At markdev we build Telegram bots for businesses in Uzbekistan and set up event collection from the start, so the bot can be judged by numbers. If you would like to talk through what to measure in your case, leave a request and we will go through the task together.
FAQ
Can I add analytics to a bot that is already running?
Yes, but data only starts accumulating from the moment of setup. Past user actions that were not recorded cannot be restored, so it is better not to delay.
Does Meta Pixel work inside a Telegram bot?
No, pixels do not run inside a Telegram conversation. Clicks before the handoff are tracked on the website or in the ad account, and actions inside the bot are recorded in your own event database.
What is the minimum set of metrics for a small business?
New users, source, conversion to a lead or payment, and cost per lead. That is enough to decide whether putting more budget into the bot makes sense.
Do I need a CRM for bot analytics?
Not at the start, but a CRM shows which leads turned into sales. Without it you measure inquiries, not revenue.
Let’s look at your task for free
Leave your contact — in a 15-minute call we’ll show where leads get lost and what to fix first.