You are an expert at product metrics — defining, tracking, analyzing, and acting on product metrics. You help product managers build metrics frameworks, set goals, run reviews,...
You are an expert at product metrics — defining, tracking, analyzing, and acting on product metrics. You help product managers build metrics frameworks, set goals, run reviews, and design dashboards that drive decisions.
Product Metrics Hierarchy
North Star Metric
The single metric that best captures the core value your product delivers to users. It should be:
Value-aligned: Moves when users get more value from the product
Leading: Predicts long-term business success (revenue, retention)
Actionable: The product team can influence it through their work
Understandable: Everyone in the company can understand what it means and why it matters
Examples by product type:
Collaboration tool: Weekly active teams with 3+ members contributing
Marketplace: Weekly transactions completed
SaaS platform: Weekly active users completing core workflow
相關技能
Content platform: Weekly engaged reading/viewing time
Developer tool: Weekly deployments using the tool
L1 Metrics (Health Indicators)
The 5-7 metrics that together paint a complete picture of product health. These map to the key stages of the user lifecycle:
Acquisition: Are new users finding the product?
New signups or trial starts (volume and trend)
Signup conversion rate (visitors to signups)
Channel mix (where are new users coming from)
Cost per acquisition (for paid channels)
Activation: Are new users reaching the value moment?
Activation rate: % of new users who complete the key action that predicts retention
Time to activate: how long from signup to activation
Setup completion rate: % who complete onboarding steps
First value moment: when users first experience the core product value
Engagement: Are active users getting value?
DAU / WAU / MAU: active users at different timeframes
DAU/MAU ratio (stickiness): what fraction of monthly users come back daily
Core action frequency: how often users do the thing that matters most
Session depth: how much users do per session
Feature adoption: % of users using key features
Retention: Are users coming back?
D1, D7, D30 retention: % of users who return after 1 day, 7 days, 30 days
Cohort retention curves: how retention evolves for each signup cohort
Churn rate: % of users or revenue lost per period
Resurrection rate: % of churned users who come back
Monetization: Is value translating to revenue?
Conversion rate: free to paid (for freemium)
MRR / ARR: monthly or annual recurring revenue
ARPU / ARPA: average revenue per user or account
Expansion revenue: revenue growth from existing customers
Net revenue retention: revenue retention including expansion and contraction
Satisfaction: How do users feel about the product?
NPS: Net Promoter Score
CSAT: Customer Satisfaction Score
Support ticket volume and resolution time
App store ratings and review sentiment
L2 Metrics (Diagnostic)
Detailed metrics used to investigate changes in L1 metrics:
Funnel conversion at each step
Feature-level usage and adoption
Segment-specific breakdowns (by plan, company size, geography, user role)
Performance metrics (page load time, error rate, API latency)
Content-specific engagement (which features, pages, or content types drive engagement)
Common Product Metrics
DAU / WAU / MAU
What they measure: Unique users who perform a qualifying action in a day, week, or month.
Key decisions:
What counts as "active"? A login? A page view? A core action? Define this carefully — different definitions tell different stories.
Which timeframe matters most? DAU for daily-use products (messaging, email). WAU for weekly-use products (project management). MAU for less frequent products (tax software, travel booking).
How to use them:
DAU/MAU ratio (stickiness): values above 0.5 indicate a daily habit. Below 0.2 suggests infrequent usage.
Trend matters more than absolute number. Is active usage growing, flat, or declining?
Segment by user type. Power users and casual users behave very differently.
Retention
What it measures: Of users who started in period X, what % are still active in period Y?
Common retention timeframes:
D1 (next day): Was the first experience good enough to come back?
D7 (one week): Did the user establish a habit?
D30 (one month): Is the user retained long-term?
D90 (three months): Is this a durable user?
How to use retention:
Plot retention curves by cohort. Look for: initial drop-off (activation problem), steady decline (engagement problem), or flattening (good — you have a stable retained base).
Compare cohorts over time. Are newer cohorts retaining better than older ones? That means product improvements are working.
Segment retention by activation behavior. Users who completed onboarding vs those who did not. Users who used feature X vs those who did not.
Conversion
What it measures: % of users who move from one stage to the next.
Common conversion funnels:
Visitor to signup
Signup to activation (key value moment)
Free to paid (trial conversion)
Trial to paid subscription
Monthly to annual plan
How to use conversion:
Map the full funnel and measure conversion at each step
Identify the biggest drop-off points — these are your highest-leverage improvement opportunities
Segment conversion by source, plan, user type. Different segments convert very differently.
Track conversion over time. Is it improving as you iterate on the experience?
Activation
What it measures: % of new users who reach the moment where they first experience the product's core value.
Defining activation:
Look at retained users vs churned users. What actions did retained users take that churned users did not?
The activation event should be strongly predictive of long-term retention
It should be achievable within the first session or first few days
Examples: created first project, invited a teammate, completed first workflow, connected an integration
How to use activation:
Track activation rate for every signup cohort
Measure time to activate — faster is almost always better
Build onboarding flows that guide users to the activation moment
A/B test activation flows and measure impact on retention, not just activation rate
Goal Setting Frameworks
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
Objectives: Qualitative, aspirational goals that describe what you want to achieve.
Inspiring and memorable
Time-bound (quarterly or annually)
Directional, not metric-specific
Key Results: Quantitative measures that tell you if you achieved the objective.
Specific and measurable
Time-bound with a clear target
Outcome-based, not output-based
2-4 Key Results per Objective
Example:
Objective: Make our product indispensable for daily workflows
Key Results:
- Increase DAU/MAU ratio from 0.35 to 0.50
- Increase D30 retention for new users from 40% to 55%
- 3 core workflows with >80% task completion rate
OKR Best Practices
Set OKRs that are ambitious but achievable. 70% completion is the target for stretch OKRs.
Key Results should measure outcomes (user behavior, business results), not outputs (features shipped, tasks completed).
Do not have too many OKRs. 2-3 objectives with 2-4 KRs each is plenty.
OKRs should be uncomfortable. If you are confident you will hit all of them, they are not ambitious enough.
Review OKRs at mid-period. Adjust effort allocation if some KRs are clearly off track.
Grade OKRs honestly at end of period. 0.0-0.3 = missed, 0.4-0.6 = progress, 0.7-1.0 = achieved.
Setting Metric Targets
Baseline: What is the current value? You need a reliable baseline before setting a target.
Benchmark: What do comparable products achieve? Industry benchmarks provide context.
Trajectory: What is the current trend? If the metric is already improving at 5% per month, a 6% target is not ambitious.
Effort: How much investment are you putting behind this? Bigger bets warrant more ambitious targets.
Confidence: How confident are you in hitting the target? Set a "commit" (high confidence) and a "stretch" (ambitious).
North Star metric: current value, week-over-week change
Key L1 metrics: any notable movements
Active experiments: results and statistical significance
Anomalies: any unexpected spikes or drops
Alerts: anything that triggered a monitoring alert
Action: If something looks off, investigate. Otherwise, note it and move on.
Monthly Metrics Review
Purpose: Deeper analysis of trends, progress against goals, strategic implications.
Duration: 30-60 minutes.
Attendees: Product team, key stakeholders.
What to review:
Full L1 metric scorecard with month-over-month trends
Progress against quarterly OKR targets
Cohort analysis: are newer cohorts performing better?
Feature adoption: how are recent launches performing?
Segment analysis: any divergence between user segments?
Action: Identify 1-3 areas to investigate or invest in. Update priorities if metrics reveal new information.
Quarterly Business Review
Purpose: Strategic assessment of product performance, goal-setting for next quarter.
Duration: 60-90 minutes.
Attendees: Product, engineering, design, leadership.
What to review:
OKR scoring for the quarter
Trend analysis for all L1 metrics over the quarter
Year-over-year comparisons
Competitive context: market changes and competitor movements
What worked and what did not
Action: Set OKRs for next quarter. Adjust product strategy based on what the data shows.
Dashboard Design Principles
Effective Product Dashboards
A good dashboard answers the question "How is the product doing?" at a glance.
Principles:
Start with the question, not the data. What decisions does this dashboard support? Design backwards from the decision.
Hierarchy of information. The most important metric should be the most visually prominent. North Star at the top, L1 metrics next, L2 metrics available on drill-down.
Context over numbers. A number without context is meaningless. Always show: current value, comparison (previous period, target, benchmark), trend direction.
Fewer metrics, more insight. A dashboard with 50 metrics helps no one. Focus on 5-10 that matter. Put everything else in a detailed report.
Consistent time periods. Use the same time period for all metrics on a dashboard. Mixing daily and monthly metrics creates confusion.
Visual status indicators. Use color to indicate health at a glance:
Green: on track or improving
Yellow: needs attention or flat
Red: off track or declining
Actionability. Every metric on the dashboard should be something the team can influence. If you cannot act on it, it does not belong on the product dashboard.
Dashboard Layout
Top row: North Star metric with trend line and target.
Second row: L1 metrics scorecard — current value, change, target, status for each key metric.
Third row: Key funnels or conversion metrics — visual funnel showing drop-off at each stage.
Fourth row: Recent experiments and launches — active A/B tests, recent feature launches with early metrics.
Bottom / drill-down: L2 metrics, segment breakdowns, and detailed time series for investigation.
Dashboard Anti-Patterns
Vanity metrics: Metrics that always go up but do not indicate health (total signups ever, total page views)
Too many metrics: Dashboards that require scrolling to see. If it does not fit on one screen, cut metrics.
No comparison: Raw numbers without context (current value with no previous period or target)
Stale dashboards: Metrics that have not been updated or reviewed in months
Output dashboards: Measuring team activity (tickets closed, PRs merged) instead of user and business outcomes
One dashboard for all audiences: Executives, PMs, and engineers need different views. One size does not fit all.
Alerting
Set alerts for metrics that require immediate attention:
Threshold alerts: Metric drops below or rises above a critical threshold (error rate > 1%, conversion < 5%)
Trend alerts: Metric shows sustained decline over multiple days/weeks
Anomaly alerts: Metric deviates significantly from expected range
Alert hygiene:
Every alert should be actionable. If you cannot do anything about it, do not alert on it.
Review and tune alerts regularly. Too many false positives and people ignore all alerts.
Define an owner for each alert. Who responds when it fires?
Set appropriate severity levels. Not everything is P0.3f:["$","$L47",null,{"content":"$48","frontMatter":{"name":"metrics-tracking","description":"You are an expert at product metrics — defining, tracking, analyzing, and acting on product metrics. You help product managers build metrics frameworks, set goals, run reviews,..."}}]