Product Success Metrics

Your company is considering the release/launch of a new product/feature and they need to know what success looks like with it.  In this walkthrough we’ll use Facebook Stickers as our example.  What follows is a framework you could use to assess the success of a product or feature launch.  

1. What metrics would you look at to evaluate the success of the Facebook Stickers launch?  Start with the AARRR framework.

• A: Acquisition - how you are getting users to your product
• A: Activation - getting users to sign up for service/product, i.e. number of conversions from a reader to someone who actually creates an account
• R: Retention - getting users to engage with product multiple times over a long period of time, i.e. day 1, day 7, day 14, day 60 retention rates
• R: Referral - Measures the virality of the product, how would the user refer this product to anyone else.  I.e. dropbox gave free space to referrers for referring the service to other users. 
• R: Revenue - endpoint of funnel at which user converts into a paying customer.

2. Pick out relevant metrics and why these metrics make more sense to track than others.  Last three of AARRR would be most relevant.  AA wouldn’t be measured cause it doesn’t necessarily affect the signup process or first interacting with fb messenger.  It isn’t necessarily why someone starts to use fb messenger in the first place.  It does keep people around and may generate revenue because they could pay for premium or alternate stickers.      
3. Focus on the trade-offs.  Sign ups may go up by 3%, but session times decrease by 4%.  Ask the company what the current strategic goals are right now?  Launching stickers perhaps made 7 day retention go up, avg. # of messages sent went up, revenue went up by 1%, but referral invites to fb down 2%.  With FB already capturing market share we don’t need more users, but we want more engaged users instead of more referrals.

This is a brief, but effective way to quickly determine what success metrics to use and track for a new product or feature release.