Vanity Metrics - Don't be deceived by them

Stopping relying on Vanity Metrics to improve your digital product because you will be making uninformed decisions.

If your a UX designer and work for a large corporation or any company, you may have noticed the lack of quality analytics. Technical debt and legacy systems make it hard for companies to stop using Vanity Metrics.

What are vanity metrics?

Vanity metrics are numbers that don't track a conversion that makes your company money. Here are some examples:
  • Page views
  • Link clicks

Why are these vanity metrics?

  • These metrics don't tell us why customers are going to pages or clicking on links. For example, customer my click on links because they are looking for something and can't find it. 
  • If the links or button clicks your tracking are not the ones that make your company revenue on your website, why are you tracking them at all?
Business people please stop using Vanity Metrics. Leaders remove technical debt, legacy systems and processes that prevent your team from tracking actionable metrics that actually track flows and conversions on your digital product that produce revenue.


What should your analytics track?

They should track flows from where the user starts their journey to get to your digital product to what path they take step by step to do an action that makes your company money. 

Track the highest revenue conversions first, do qualitative 1 on 1 interviews and usability testing with participants so you can take that research and improve the conversions on your digital product that makes your company the most money.

Then move to less profitable conversions if you have time and budget for them. 

Defining the Happy Path for your software

It is always best to do 1-on-1 qualitative interviews and usability tests with your actual customers or with people who represent your customer persona(s) or that are your target persona(s). Find the common themes of behavior, mental model, needs and challenges. Then make a target persona out of the research. Your qualitative research and usability tests should define what the "Happy Path" is for each flow in your software application for your customers and your target customer(s) or persona(s).

Lean Hypothesis Writing

  1. We believe that...
  2. We will do/make...
  3. We will know if the hypothesis is valid if...

  • Qualitative Evidence
  • Quantitative Evidence

Example:
We believe that Tom (Tom is one of your personas) prefers to use his Social Security Number to authenticate his identity in order to register for his online banking app.

We will make a registration process prototype where Tom has several options to verify his identity in order to register for his banking app. One of those options should be SSN. We will do usability tests using our prototype with 5 participants who represent our target persona.

We will know if it is valid if Tom chooses to use his SSN instead of the other options presented to him to register for his banking app and communicates that he likes or prefers using his SSN.