6 Ways To Be At Harmony With Data And Metrics

If you're starting out as a SaaS Product Manager, here's how you want to approach your relationship with data and metrics.

1. Choose the right metric

Once you understand what the company & product strategy is, you need to brainstorm what metrics align well with them.

Ex: increasing market share? Think about MAUs, sign-ups, conversion rates, CAC.

2. Instrument it properly

The worst thing that can happen 2 quarters in is to discover your stats are inaccurate due to a glitch in how you measure it.

Set up your trackers or SQLs. Triple check them. Solicit help from a QA if you have to.

3. Care about hygiene

Be wary of biases in your data. Does your analytics tool sample data? Any exceptions when categorizing data points?

4. Benchmark it

Great, you have a conversion rate of 3%.

Is that good or bad? How would anyone know? Chart out industry averages or map figures to past performance.

See more: Cool Ways to Show Data: 15 Creative Methods to Present Data

5. Interpret it

What does a falling bounce rate indicate? Your CAC is down but your churn is high. Tie some conclusion (or theories) with the numbers.

6. Learn to present it

Never just share raw numbers with leadership. Package it, summarize it. Use visualizations that make trends apparent. Storytelling with numbers is the best way to influence.