Your Product Metrics Are Probably Wrong

Stop Using Someone Else's Product Metrics

I see it everywhere - product managers obsessing over the same metrics, copying frameworks from tech giants, following the same measurement playbook.

Just look at any PM community discussion. Everyone's tracking something because big companies do it. Or they're fixated on some arbitrary engagement benchmark because a famous startup blogged about it. Or they're all using the same North Star Metric because some unicorn swears by it.

We've lost sight of what meaningful measurement actually means for our unique products and users.

Why Most PMs Get It Wrong

The problem isn't with wanting to measure product success. Of course you need metrics and frameworks - these are your basic tools as a PM.

The problem is that copying someone else's metrics is like wearing someone else's prescription glasses. Sure, they work great for them, but they might be blinding you to what your users actually need.

I learned this the hard way. Early in my career, I was religiously tracking DAU/MAU because that's what Facebook did. But our B2B enterprise product wasn't Facebook. Our users weren't supposed to log in daily - they needed to log in during specific workflow moments. We were optimizing for the wrong behavior.

A Different (and More Effective) Approach

Instead of asking "What metrics should I track?", try asking:

"What would indicate that our specific users are getting massive value from our product?"

This shifts everything. Instead of copying metrics from the latest PM blog post, you might actually:

• Spend a full week using your product as your customer would

• Map out every single assumption you've made about user behavior

• Question why you're measuring what you're measuring

• Create custom metrics that reflect your unique value proposition

The irony? This approach of deeply understanding your specific users will give you much more actionable insights than any borrowed metrics framework.

What Actually Works

My most successful product decisions haven't come from following the standard measurement playbook. They've come from obsessing over our unique users and their specific needs.

Like when we completely ignored industry-standard engagement metrics and instead focused on one specific workflow completion rate. That metric looked terrible on paper - users only completed it once per quarter. But guess what? That's exactly how often they needed to do it, and they renewed their contracts because we made that quarterly workflow 10x better than their previous solution.

Or when we discovered our "power users" weren't the ones using every feature (as conventional wisdom would suggest), but rather the ones who used just two features in a very specific sequence. This insight completely changed our onboarding strategy.

The Bottom Line

I hope you'll reconsider how you measure product success.

Instead of copying metrics and frameworks, deeply understand what makes your product and users unique. Maybe you already know this but have been afraid to deviate from the "standard" approach.

Because meaningful measurement doesn't come from following a template - it comes from truly understanding your specific users and then measuring what actually matters to them.

And here's the beautiful part:

Even if your metrics don't match the industry standards, you'll still have built something valuable: a measurement framework that actually reflects real user value in a way that makes sense for your product.

Let's put the "meaningful" back in measurement by actually understanding our unique users.