The Devil’s Metrics: CTR, Conversion Rate, Funnels, Time Spent, etc
Why you should not focus only on these metrics
Anybody working on web based applications would’ve used or heard these “success metrics” like CTR (click-through-rate), Conversion rate, Funnels, Time spent, Session length, Number of signups, and many more. People who work on such products may have even exclusively designed and built features to enhance these metrics. It’s not that improving these numbers is not good. It is just that building only for these metrics, sucks! Sucks for the end users.
Let’s consider an example:
A company wants to increase its newsletter sign ups. So it makes a popup. Cool. However once it is live, not many people sign up. So the company makes the popup bigger, full-page, with a big red sign up button. And “Sign up” is the only way to get to the content. They’ve cleverly eliminated the “X” button so the only way forward is give an email. Sign ups increase.
“WINNING!” think the people behind this plan. But did they really win?
Some more examples of such implementations:
- Focusing on “Time spent” as a metric, and introducing hurdles so the process to do something takes longer
- Making unsubscribing lengthy and cumbersome so as to maintain the subscriber count
- Confirm-shaming: changing the copy to shame the users against doing an undesirable action (check out the twitter hashtag #confirmshaming for examples)
- Having an entry-popup: I mean, I’ve JUST landed on your website and you’re already showing me a popup? Why? I don’t even know what your site is about!!
I’ve called these Devil’s Metrics, because of the way these are used majority of the time. They only focus on the company’s bottomline while ignoring their users’ needs, and going against end user experience.
Perspective
Metrics are like the symptoms of a condition in our body
These metrics are great when they’re used indicators of the overall value proposition of a product, or a part of the product. Metrics are like the symptoms of a condition in our body. If the metrics are falling and you design only to improve them, you’re treating the symptom, not the cause. The real cause is still undiscovered, untreated.
Sure you can make an unclosable popup and get sign-ups. But why should the end user click on that link? What value will they get by signing up?
Any work to solely improve metrics without a deeper evaluation of user needs is like popping a pill into an ailing product. Symptoms will only subside temporarily. But they will come back over the long term.
The right way to do it
Instead of doing this parlor tricks and getting the numbers, understand how your product is adding value to an end user. Is your product really what your target audience wants? Do they expect something different? Find out. If they find your product at the intersection of the things that are important to them, they will use your product — even if it has no popups.
The goal is to know how your product is adding value to your target audience
How do you do that? Simple. Ask them. Make a survey. Ask some users for a quick feedback call. Invite them into your office to dive deeper into what they need. Gather a good amount of feedback and synthesize all of it. This will result in realizing some blind spots that you may never have thought of.
The goal is to always know how your product is adding value to your target audience. Once that is clear, incremental design and product changes will only push the numbers up — and do that over the long term.
Examples:
Apple. Say what you want about Apple products, people buy it in millons. There are many websites that see huge sales hit once they remove their discounts. But Apple doesn’t seem to slow down even when they’ve pushed the prices of their phones way past $1000. They don’t offer many discounts, and yet, they sell. Their consumer-value focus is strong, and it shows in their products.
Lets consider another example: OnePlus. OnePlus is known for taking customers’ feedback and making products from that. They consider price and current market context to maximize their value offering. Excellent approach.
Conclusion
So if you’re seeing poor metrics consistently, try to discover the root cause. Most often, it’s because the user is not getting the value they’d like. If you have no idea what that is, talking to them helps.
