Three glamour metrics we hate (and what to use instead)

Actionable metrics are the only ones that matter to your business. Endless spreadsheets and glamour metrics will turn off stakeholders before they give your reporting a chance.

At Grasp Metrics, we’ve created a number of custom metrics that inform our Demand, Interest and Engagement scores to help us keep things crisp.

But when we need to dive into the weeds for a client, there are a few easy wins:

Instead of Pageviews: Engaged time

Pageviews. Do not report on them. Ever. It’s a terrible metric that should die. Instead, use something like engaged time (we use a plug-in for Google Analytics called Riveted) to give a better idea of how much time visitors are spending with your site and its content.
 

Instead of Open Rate: Click-Through Rate

Gauging the number of people who have opened your email is okay, but 99% of the time brands are hoping to drive some type of action or click on a specific piece of that email. Use the number of click-throughs as a better indicator of how successful your email campaigns are. Most would rather have 500 opens with 250 click-throughs than 1000 opens with only 220 click-throughs.
 

Instead of Social Followers: Engaged Users

As each social network gets more complicated with how their algorithm decides to serve your organic audience, fan and follower numbers become less important. Pages with 50,000 fans may only reach 500 engaged fans through a given post. Engaged users is a vastly superior metric to gauge long-term growth.
 

Other Great Resources:

• Kissmetrics: 8 conversion metrics to track