The most important user metric

Date

July 26, 2023

When it comes to consumer platforms and B2C services, a myriad of metrics and dimensions are available. Moreover, multiple data sources and tools can exponentially increase the quantity of these metrics and dimensions. We conducted an internal exercise and determined that, solely for reporting purposes, we use more than 2000 combinations of metrics and dimensions. Daily.

Transactions, app installs, conversion rates, and all other available metrics can prove useful IF and only IF the most critical user metric is in good shape.

Speed.

UX becomes irrelevant on a platform burdened by slow speed.
Product features lose their importance if they don't load quickly.
Marketing performance campaigns are futile if they direct users to pages that load indefinitely.
Incentives turn laughable on a platform that takes ages to load.

💡

Imagine experiencing a three-second delay in all of your actions in real life. It would be quite a hassle, wouldn't it? 😂

Pagespeed insights (Desktop)

Pagespeed insights (Mobile)

Platform loading speed (including perceived loading speed) requires optimization of a few additional KPIs to achieve satisfactory platform load speed.

Here are the metrics we currently use to assess platform speed:

Device	Metric
App	App Start to Interactive
App	Frozen frames %
App	App size (MB)
App	Crash-free sessions %
App	Slow rendering %

Device	Metric
Web	First Contentful Paint
Web	Largest Contentful Paint
Web	Total Blocking Time
Web	Cumulative Layout Shift
Web	Speed Index

Ensure attention to your platform speed. It holds great significance.

💡 Takeaways:

Continuously allocate resources to speed optimization.
Regularly evaluate what needs improvement or removal to maintain a healthy state.
Be cautious with each new feature that adds to the load, affecting speed.
Identify and address speed-related issues before introducing any new feature.

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