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?

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."

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.

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.

[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)

[joshdotsmith → ig1]

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?

[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.

[joshdotsmith → jacquesm]

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.

[getonit → jacquesm]

Analysing a race performance by looking at a rostrum - those who make the rostrum have performances worth looking at in detail, and skipping those that don't can save you a lot of time.

[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.