What are vanity metrics?
Posted: Sun Feb 02, 2025 3:55 am
Remember: Vanity metrics are those that do not help you make the best business decisions.
Therefore, any data that does not cause change can be considered a vanity metric to a certain extent.
Some vanity metrics do have their value, make no mistake about this point, but they simply do not deserve as much attention as others, they should not be considered KPIs for a project.
Some of the most typical examples are:
1. Likes, +1, heart on Twitter and similar
When they ask you: "How are your Facebook campaigns going?"
It's still very common to hear the response "You're doing great! mexico phone data We got X likes." Ok, good. But what do you do with this information?
I may have liked this because I liked the title, or the image of the kitten gif you posted.
Again, there is not enough information to lead to any decision making, so this is perhaps the most dangerous and the main vanity metric someone can have.
If you still want to know if it might still be worth buying likes, I suggest you read this post carefully.
2. App downloads
If you own an app, you must have put in a lot of effort to get people to download it.
But, it is necessary to better understand how related this number is to billing and paid users.
Downloading mobile applications generates a transactional cost for companies and the uninstall rate is often the cause of this number.
For someone who is still creating an app or has recently launched one on the market, the number of downloads is certainly very important.
But in the long term, be careful. Measure the aforementioned uninstall rate, downloads per registration (users) and of course, paying users of your app.
If you have few downloads, but many registrations, few uninstalls and users make use of the paid features of these, you are fine!
And if you have any questions about how to use Content Marketing for apps, we have this very interesting post on the subject.
Therefore, any data that does not cause change can be considered a vanity metric to a certain extent.
Some vanity metrics do have their value, make no mistake about this point, but they simply do not deserve as much attention as others, they should not be considered KPIs for a project.
Some of the most typical examples are:
1. Likes, +1, heart on Twitter and similar
When they ask you: "How are your Facebook campaigns going?"
It's still very common to hear the response "You're doing great! mexico phone data We got X likes." Ok, good. But what do you do with this information?
I may have liked this because I liked the title, or the image of the kitten gif you posted.
Again, there is not enough information to lead to any decision making, so this is perhaps the most dangerous and the main vanity metric someone can have.
If you still want to know if it might still be worth buying likes, I suggest you read this post carefully.
2. App downloads
If you own an app, you must have put in a lot of effort to get people to download it.
But, it is necessary to better understand how related this number is to billing and paid users.
Downloading mobile applications generates a transactional cost for companies and the uninstall rate is often the cause of this number.
For someone who is still creating an app or has recently launched one on the market, the number of downloads is certainly very important.
But in the long term, be careful. Measure the aforementioned uninstall rate, downloads per registration (users) and of course, paying users of your app.
If you have few downloads, but many registrations, few uninstalls and users make use of the paid features of these, you are fine!
And if you have any questions about how to use Content Marketing for apps, we have this very interesting post on the subject.