Vanity Metrics

What are vanity metrics?

Vanity metrics are metrics that are only good for the ego. Vanity metrics are numbers that sound impressive but do not reveal much about the underlying business.

If you have data on which you cannot act, it is a vanity metric. You should want the data to:

• Inform
• Guide
• Help

You also should want it to improve the business model by facilitating decisions about the course of action or pivots.

Whenever you look at a metric, ask yourself one question: “What will I do differently based on this information?” If you cannot answer that question, you should not worry too much about that metric.

Common vanity metrics

Typical vanity metrics are:

• Number of visits
• Number of clicks
• Number of unique visitors
• Number of followers/friends/likes
• Time on the site
• Number of pages visited
• Emails collected
• Number of downloads