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.