These Are the Metrics Great Product Managers Track

Monthly Active Users (MAU) and Daily Active Users (DAU) are a great overview of a digital product’s overall health. If you’re thinking about your long-term growth, these are metrics that you can’t afford to miss. They help to track whether your user base is growing or not, and how ‘sticky’ your product is for end-users.

Determining what a DAU is will depend entirely on your product. It’s very rarely as simple as someone who just opens the app and then closes it again.

Similarly, how often someone needs to use your product to qualify as an MAU will also vary depending on your offering.

A low Customer Conversion Rate shows that people are landing on your app/website, and not really finding what they’re expecting, or they’re disappointed.

Why does this matter? For starters, it helps you identify key drop-off points for users and features which may not be working. Equally, if you find that only a small percentage of your users find your new feature, but the conversion rate is very high, you know that the fault is not with the feature itself, but discoverability.

If you have a high churn rate, it means that your product isn’t delivering what it promises. On the other hand, a low churn rate shows that your user base is loyal, and likes your product at least enough to stick with it.

Don’t forget that not all churn is bad! For example, dating apps like Badoo and Tinder are sometimes uninstalled because they’ve served their purpose, and the users are now in relationships.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) are great ways to measure the sentiments of your users. 

• Your NPS score, in a nutshell, tells you how well your product is loved by users. It helps you segment your users into 3 categories based on how they rate your product out of 10.
• CSAT is a more simple score and can be used to measure how happy users are with individual processes and features. While NPS is more often used to measure how happy customers are with the entire user journey, CSAT allows you to be more specific.

There are a few keys to proper data management that will set you up for success:

• Centralize your data. When different teams/team members are accessing different data locations, you risk miscommunication.
• Share your data. Empower team members to make good, data-driven decisions by giving them access to the metrics they need.
• Visualize your data. Using tools with data visualization features turns complicated numbers into simple visuals. This makes them easy to understand for all team members, not just those who are well versed in data.