Use storytelling to avoid the vanity metric trap !

It is very easy as product managers to fall prey to tracking vanity metrics. Vanity metrics, as the name suggests, look good or interesting to track but are rarely indicative of the true product performance. Such metrics turn out to be just superficial numbers if used standalone and can often be misleading.

Some examples are tracking growth in active users without taking into account inactive or unsubscribed users; or tracking page visits and click through rates without looking at the conversions.

PMs are often advised to track more actionable metrics. But how does one identify the right metrics to track !

One easy way to ensure that we are not falling in the vanity metric trap is to form a story using the metrics that we are tracking. The story could start from any metric of choice and lead to our north star metric.

For example, to form a story between page visits and average revenue per active user, we would have to track page visits, CTRs, conversion ratio, revenue generated in the given timeframe and total active users in the same time frame. This will help us get a comprehensive understanding of every step of the funnel — from page visits till revenue generation.

Furthermore, the whole idea of tracking all metrics across the consumer journey instead of standalone metrics is accepting that the entire story has more information to offer. i.e. Sum of the whole is greater than the parts !