Metrics And KPIs Every Saas Product Manager Should Track

The most important product metrics for SaaS companies. How to find them and improve the product with data-driven decisions.

Metrics can be really confusing if you are just starting your adventure as a Product Manager. Even more so when it comes to software products. There is so much information about what’s working now, why certain things are important, how do you measure this or that… But there is no one solution that fits all, because each company has its own way of doing things and size doesn’t matter either. The only thing that matters is having a well defined system in place to understand what your users want from your product. That’s where metrics come into play! They give you a clear insight about how users are using your product, what is working and where you should be focusing on.

Having said so, there are some metrics out there which are more important than others – simply because they are ‘harder’ to get. These are the ones that give you a deeper understanding of your user’s behavior habits. And if done right, will also help you to focus on the features that matter the most to your product success. For example: If you have 1000 registered users but only 10 active users, then this is an indication that there might be something wrong with the sign up flow or onboarding process of your app/website!

Below I’ve listed some of these hard to get metrics with tips for collecting them more effectively.

Number of Email Subscribers

Difficulty : High

You will need to sign up for an email marketing tool, create a list and then have your users subscribe themselves. Here are a few good examples: Hubspot , Mad Mimi , MailChimp . This is definitely the most time consuming way to collect emails but you’ll be rewarded with more high quality leads! The best practice is to use this spreadsheet template  for keeping track of your subscribers over time.

Number of Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Difficulty : High

You can use Google Analytics Custom Report under Audience section for finding out the number of monthly active users on different days during month or year. Just select “Users” as metric and “Date Range” as dimensions and you’ll get a report as shown below:

Number of Visits to your Website

Difficulty : Medium

You can use Google Analytics Custom Report under Conversions section for finding out the number of visits to your website on different days during month or year. Just select “Secondary Dimension” as metric and “Date Range” as dimensions and you’ll get a report as shown below: Alternatively, you can also use Google Analytics’ URL builder  for getting historical traffic data from your website.

Twitter Followers

Difficulty: High

In order to find out how many followers you have on twitter, just go to Twitter Counter . If you want more accurate results, simply follow this guide for creating an app specific password and use it while signing in.

Website Hits

Difficulty: Moderate

To get the history of your website hits, you can simply access your Google Analytics reports and download them as shown below: Alternatively, if you want to track the number of visitors on a daily basis then you’ll have to go with a tool like Bit.ly’s Custom Metrics

Expenses & Income

Difficulty: Medium

In order to find out what are my monthly expenses or income just follow these steps: Open up “You Need A Budget” application On the top right corner, click on My Accounts Click on Add Account Give all the possible account name such as Car Loan, Mobile Bill etc. Then select 2nd option from top-left corner for custom transaction

Tracking Time

Difficulty: Easy

If you are working on any project then it is pretty much mandatory to track the time you spend on each task so that at the end of the month/week you get an idea about your productivity. In order to do that just use a tool like Toggl or Harvest .

More Productivity

Difficulty: Medium

Instead of wasting time surfing social media sites, shopping online etc. try out Pomodoro technique since it helps you work more efficiently . In order to do that, follow these steps: Set a timer for 25 minutes Start working Once the timer rings, take a short 5-minute break Repeat from step 2 until you have completed 4 rounds

Password Resets

Difficulty: Hard

It has been found that the biggest stumbling block people have with productivity is trying to remember all their usernames and passwords. In order to not lose track of your online accounts, use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password as it will save strong passwords as well as automatically log you in when you visit associated sites.

New Hard Drive

Difficulty: Hard

Do you know replacing a hard drive can also boost up your productivity? So here is what you should do: Replace your old hard drive with a solid state drive (SSD) by cloning your current system over a USB 3.0 connection Remove the HDD from the laptop, buy an external enclosure for it and keep it somewhere safe If one day, your SSD fails then you put the old HDD back into the laptop, boot into your Clonezilla live USB, restore the backup on your SSD

Synchronize Your Data

Difficulty: Medium

Google Drive is a great platform to sync all of your files. It costs 15$ per month so it might be limited for some users but you still have access to 2TB worth of data if you buy one of their Chromebooks. An alternative would be Dropbox which even though is limited to two devices and 1 TB storage free, it’s free forever.

Become a great B2B SaaS Product Manager

1. Project Management Skills

Prioritizing tasks and communicating status updates proactively with key stakeholders such as the CEO / leadership team. Great PMs know how to break up big projects into smaller ones and cascade these down into their own backlogs. They create actionable tasks for teams to complete and track these in project management tools, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

2. Technical Product/Market Understanding:

Product Managers should be knowledgeable about what their current user base looks like (e.g. type of users, how many are free vs paying users). More importantly, they should also have an understanding of where their product or service can expand into next to capture additional market share. This includes identifying new feature opportunities as well as knowing when to cut back on “nice-to-have” features that do not impact the core experience for both new and existing users.

3. Ability To Craft A Compelling Business Case For Why A Feature Should Be Built Or Why A Competitor Feature Should Be Acquired:

PMs should also be able to articulate why a feature is needed and would help accomplish a specific business objective. This requires having a thorough understanding of the current state, as well as what will need to change if a new product goal is being pursued.

4. Ability To Craft Compelling Product Experiences:

At the highest level, PMs should have an ability to visualize how their product or service will look from a user’s perspective and craft that into something customers will love. In practice, this means building features that are not only useful for your customers but also fit within your company’s overall messaging strategy which can oftentimes be quite complicated at scale with many different stakeholders involved. Your target audience is a key component, but it’s just one of the many pieces to consider when building a product from scratch.

Also Read: Why Everyone Moving to Cloud Phone System