

Ask HN: What are the best unique metrics you've tracked? - joshdotsmith

The recent TC article about why Greylock invested in Groupon got me thinking more deeply about metrics. Yes, we all (should) track things like conversions, our viral growth rate, etc. But are there some really unique metrics we're all missing?<p>That article made me think that there are. These lines prompted it: "They talked us though the obvious data such as customer acquisition costs and lifetime value and the economics of entering a new region. But they also dove into some unique metrics we’d never seen startups track before."<p>So I'd like to know: what are the best unique – and actionable – metrics you've tracked? I'd also love to hear how you reacted to those metrics, and what your outcomes were.<p>I want to compile a list on my own blog as a resource to other entrepreneurs, so if you'd like credit as a linkback or something, feel free to post that as well.
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ig1
Mostly about site tracking rather than business tracking but:

Visits by time of day & day of week. For a lot of sites traffic is very time
dependent. People look at jobs sites in late afternoon, dating sites in the
late evening, etc. By running our ads specifically in our peak period we
tripled our CTR.

Scrolling metrics. We've found scrolling metrics to be a much better measure
of engagement than time spent on site (which is often incorrectly recorded as
0 by many analytics systems for bounced users)

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joshdotsmith
Awesome on the scrolling metrics. How do you go about doing that? I'm assuming
its some sort of JavaScript, but any particular metrics products you use to
track that?

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jacquesm
Net Profits.

Seriously, the bottom line is the only one that really makes sense, every
other metric that you track you track to analyze its effect on your net
profits. If a decision impacts your bottom line in a negative way look at it
long and hard if there is a way to modify is to that the damage is mitigated
and if a decision impacts the bottom line in a positive way (and it's legal
and matches your sense of ethics) then by all means go for it.

Almost everything you do impacts the bottom line in a measurable way.

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joshdotsmith
Agreed that the bottom line is the most fundamental, but depending upon your
path to monetization, your net profits may be zero for quite some time. For
us, the metrics that matter most are acquisition and engagement, as well as
measuring potential paths to revenue (clicks on mock ads, mock deals, etc).

Plus, net profits is quite a large forest. You still need to see the trees.

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joshdotsmith
I'll start off with one that I spotted the other day while researching:

Email notification length vs. CTR.

That's one I never considered before outright, yet I've crafted all my
notifications with a sense for that metric. You want your notifications to be
just long enough to be tempting, but not so long that they can simply read the
email and never click through.

