What Is Vanity Metrics? — Wiki

Vanity metrics are measurements that make you appear good in the eyes of the others but don't assist you in evaluating your own success in a way that guides future strategy.

Analytics metrics that are tracked should be workable: changes in a relevant, generally stable measure should represent changes in the customer experience. Vanity metrics, on the other hand, seem spectacular, but the swings really aren't functional.

It is your responsibility as a marketer to dig past the huge and impressive-looking stats and extract actionable insights.

Metrics should always be actionable: shifts in the measure should correspond to shifts in the healthiness of your digital property.

To establish the extent to which your team is wasting time monitoring metrics that aren't as important as others.

If the statistic you're evaluating doesn't help you achieve any of those goals, it could be preferable to keep it.

Metrics that respond to this query with a "no" are not actionable.

While these vanity metrics may be used as part of a formula to derive other, more meaningful metrics, they should not be published on their own.

Vanity metrics have the following characteristics:

• Customers' running total
  
• Taking a look at active users
  
• Each and The per Rates for the Total Number of Users
  
• Likes and Followers on Social Media
  
• Purchase or download totals on a continuous basis
  
• Keeping track of website hits but not conversions
  
• Number of brand-new users added each day

While the statistics may appear great on the surface, these metrics may not truly reflect an organization's primary drivers (e.g., unique visitors, interaction, cost of gaining new customers, and so on) and give no information into how an item or effort connects to larger business goals.

Note that almost all collected metrics should assist you measure the performance of your system's layout and inspire you to take action if necessary.