Getting started with success metrics: A practical guide for product teams

If you read our earlier article about the benefits of using success metrics in your organization, you already understand that it’s less about building a massive system, and more about shifting how your team thinks, acts, and learns. 

This guide offers a clear, step-by-step approach to making success metrics a natural part of the product cycle for all of your digital product teams.

1. Start by mapping your current state

Before selecting any metrics, take a moment to understand your current situation. There’s no need for a full analytics audit – just start with a few essential questions. What are you measuring today, if anything? Where do you feel confident, and where are you guessing? How do you currently define success, and how do you know when you’ve achieved it?

One great strategy is choosing one key user flow, such as signing up or completing onboarding, and walking through it with your team. 

Pinpoint where users encounter friction, drop off, or where there’s uncertainty about what happens. This exercise often reveals opportunities where even simple measurements can lead to meaningful improvements. Repeat the process with other critical user flows to expand your perspective.

“Don’t underestimate the value of qualitative insights. Conversations with users, patterns in support tickets, and feedback from teammates can highlight pain points that raw numbers might miss. “

– Lari Tuominen, Group CEO, Qvik

Seeing clearly – both quantitatively and qualitatively – is the foundation for effective measurement.

2. Select a few, meaningful success metrics

Once you have a clear picture, it’s time to decide what to track. Many teams make the mistake of trying to measure too much, too soon.

Choose a small set – two to five metrics – that genuinely matter to your product and business. Prioritize metrics that your team can influence and that offer insights you can act upon. Starting is all about building the habit, so like any other habit you’re taking on, you have to make it satisfying – your teams will feel motivated to continue as they see the impact and value of their work. 

“Be wary of so-called ‘vanity metrics’, like page views or raw signups. Tracking select metrics just for reporting’s sake often results in impressive-looking figures that fail to translate into real business impact.”

– Lari Tuominen, Group CEO, Qvik

Look for success metrics tied to value; like how many users complete a meaningful task, or return to your app after their first visit.

3. Set goals that drive action

Your next step is to set goals based on the metrics you’ve chosen. Use historical data, market benchmarks, or thoughtful hypotheses to establish targets.

“Imagine your team is focused on improving onboarding. Your completion rate is stuck at 40%, and after looking at your data and talking to your users, it looks like it might be too complicated. After improvement, it might be reasonable to aim for a 60% onboarding completion rate. This gives your team a clear, measurable target to work toward.”

– Lari Tuominen, Group CEO, Qvik

Goals help shape your roadmap, communicate it, and evaluate progress. They also provide clarity, turning abstract intentions into concrete action.

4. Embed metrics into your development process

To truly benefit from success metrics, they must be built into your workflow and scope – not be an afterthought. Start every feature, epic, user story or sprint with a success definition. 

“When an epic is framed as ‘Build new login flow – with a goal to reduce failed logins by 20 percent’, everyone is instantly on the same page.”

– Lari Tuominen, Group CEO, Qvik

Make reviewing outcomes a part of your existing process. Scrum teams can use sprint reviews and retrospectives to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and why. This brings continuity.

5. Review, reflect, and adjust

This final phase is where teams often get the most value – and learn the most. After release, take your time analyzing the results. Did key numbers improve? By how much? If not, what might explain the outcome? 

As your understanding of the product deepens, your metrics evolve. Some will remain relevant, others will be replaced. The point is progress. Over time, you’ll develop a sharper sense of what works and what doesn’t. And, even if your attempts “fail,” you’ll move forward with more clarity.

Common pitfalls – and how to avoid them

As your team starts working with metrics, it’s easy to fall into a few traps that derail your progress. Here you can find some of them:

• Focusing on vanity metrics – as mentioned, metrics like page views, downloads, or registered users can look impressive, but often don’t reflect actual product value. Instead, focus on engagement, retention, activation, and outcomes
• Measuring too much too soon – as mentioned, teams often start with a huge set of metrics without a clear goal, leading to “analysis paralysis”. Instead, start with a focused set of KPIs tied to business and user value
• No clear definition of success – as mentioned, if the team is not aligned on what success looks like, metrics won’t help drive action. Instead, define success criteria early, and keep it top of mind
• Ignoring qualitative feedback – as mentioned, relying solely on numbers is a mistake, as it can hide the “why” behind user behavior. Instead, pair quantitative data with user surveys, support tickets, and interviews
• Lack of visibility – When metrics aren’t clearly visualized and communicated across teams, they lose their power. Instead, make key metrics visible, accessible, and part of everyday conversations for all; not just business decision-makers.
  
• Short-term focus – Measuring short-term wins might feel rewarding, but it actually can distract your entire team from long-term product strategy and health. Instead, include metrics that reflect longer term impact, like user retention and product-market fit
  
• Misaligned metrics across teams – It’s not uncommon for product, design and engineering teams to track different metrics that aren’t tied into common goals. Instead, create cross-functional alignment on what success looks like, and how it’s measured
• Not tying metrics to user value – Tracking internal indicators, such as velocity, without linking it to user outcomes misses the point. Instead, ask yourself how your success metric improves value for your business or the user
• Failing to iterate on your success metrics – Metrics chosen in the beginning may lose relevance as your product evolves. Instead, regularly revisit and revise your measurement framework based on learnings
• Neglecting context – A spike or drop in your success metrics can easily be misinterpreted without understanding internal or external factors, e.g. seasons, pricing changes, campaigns, or resource allocation. Instead, always look at your metrics with the broader product and market context in mind
• Confusing outputs with outcomes – Tracking the number of features released or bugs fixed doesn’t tell you if your product is succeeding. Instead, prioritize outcome metrics like user satisfaction, retention, or increased efficiency

Start now and keep evolving

Working with success metrics means basing your product decisions on valuable outcomes and laying the foundation for continuous improvement. In the final article of this series, we’ll explore what kinds of success metrics matter most for digital product teams, and how to choose the ones that take you where you want to be.

Do you have a well-functioning success measurement framework in use for your product teams? Or would you like help setting it up? If you’d like to discuss the topic further, we are happy to assist.