Day 12/30: Top Five Product Success Metrics 📊
Daily/monthly active users, customer acquisition costs, annual recurring revenue... where do I begin? 🥴
Measuring success in life—let alone in product—is hard.
Every product’s top N success metrics is different.
For the same product, as the product goes through its own lifecycle, its top N success metrics will also change.
So how might we think about defining success quantitatively?
This requires an ever-evolving, ever-refined understanding of the following:
Your target customer’s perception of the value they receive from using your product
Your company’s business model, specially how your product makes money for the company
Where your product is in its lifecycle and where you and your company are steering it next
Remember that this isn’t a solo person exercise either!
Folks across the business will see the product model uniquely.
Partner with your cross-functional peers to hypothesize and test which measurements actually signal material impact to your customers/users and the business
There is no meaningful universal definition of product success. It will always be nuanced and context-specific.