Product Metrics: The puzzle of ambiguity

We are surrounded by umpteen number of products which bring us customer delight. This customer delight, in turn brings revenue for the company that builds the product and in turn impacts the shareholder value. Looking at this would indicate the product metric for every customer facing product should be customer delight. Well, we are in for a surprise as product metric is a puzzle which is yet to be unlocked by multiple products, and this results in ambiguity in what drives the shareholder value and company’s moolah. In the case of customer delight, it is an intangible measure, and its presence will be helpful but not define the company’s top and bottom line.

So, what is a product metric and how do we define it for a product?

Product Metric is anything that helps track the success of a product from a user’s perspective. Any improvement in metric should have a direct impact on company’s business metrics. Product metrics can vary from product to product. A physical product will have a totally different metric vs a digital product. Defining a metric can be very tough in such cases, but some principles can act as the building block for defining the product metric.

1. Identify an intersection between the users and development team: Often we end up defining product metrics to meet user’s needs. In this process, we lose track of…