Playcode School / What to measure
Measure the task, not the visit.
Page views and sign-ups show that people arrived. They do not show whether anyone finished what they came to do.
Start with three events: the completed task, the return and the payment. For each one, write down who counts and over which period.
Count the moment the task is done.
Name the one task your product exists for and the moment it is finished. That moment is your first event. Visits are easy to count and hard to read: more page views can mean people like a feature, or that they are lost in it.
Kerry Rodden, Hilary Hutchinson and Xin Fu make that point in "Measuring the User Experience on a Large Scale" (2010). They work from goals to signals to metrics: the goal is the task, the signal is the moment it is done, and the metric counts those moments.
Example: the goal is a checked summary a recruiter can send to a hiring manager. The signal is her saving it. The metric is the share of new accounts that save one in their first week.
Track three events.
One finished task can be curiosity. Coming back and paying say more. Name all three events before you look at any number.
- The completed task
- The moment the job is done. Example: a recruiter saves a checked summary.
- The return
- The same task again on a later day. Example: a second saved summary within a month of the first.
- The payment
- A payment that went through, minus refunds. A click on the pricing page shows interest, not a payment. Example: the first successful payment from an account that has saved a summary.
Fix who counts and for how long.
For each event, write down who counts and over which window, such as the accounts created in one week and a return within a month of their first task. With the same group and window each time, one week compares fairly with the next.
Record that something happened, not what people wrote. The event says a summary was saved; the summary itself stays the customer's.
Write your event plan.
Use your own product, or edit the example below. Your answers stay in this browser until you choose to start a project. Copy or download the plan, or use it to start a Playcode project.
This is an editable example, not data from a real product. An event plan names what to record; it does not set up analytics or a privacy notice for you.
When a number surprises you, ask why.
Events show where people stop. They do not show why. Watch someone try the task, or ask about the last time they tried it.