BLOG.BILALAHMED.ORG: Startup metrics: Viral factors, Retention cohorts and Engagement metrics

Startup metrics: Viral factors, Retention cohorts and Engagement metrics

In this blog I will cover how to calculate 3 main essentials for Startup metrics:

Viral Factors: A simple example is importing address book. If I import address book of 100 users and send out invites for 10000 users, the child registration conversation has to be over 100%, e.g. viral factor of 1.00 for a startup to be in a growth mode.

Build a dashboard.
Build summary tables.
Measure # of users.
# invites send out.
# open.
# clicked.
# converted.
# of child registrations.
# calculate viral factor: total child registered/total parent registered.
Google chart intervals of viral factors, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

Retention Cohorts:

Measure how many times your users are coming back to the site.

Build a dashboard.
Build summary tables.
Measure # of users (newly registered).
# of user logins.
# calculate retention co-efficient (cohort): amount of logged in times/total users registered
Google chart intervals of retention cohort, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

Engagement Metrics:

Measure by product/feature, how many uploads, viewed, etc. metrics on how the adoption is increasing or decreasing.

Build a dashboard.
Build summary tables.
Measure # of users (newly registered).
# of uploads, # of views, # of comments, etc. aggregate.
# calculate engagement co-efficient (cohort): amount of users engaged in content/total registered.
Google chart intervals of retention cohort, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

Lessons learned:

Don't over complicate the problem: Hadoop is a solution; Metrics is about finding the problem. Learn how to read metrics and make decisions that impact the metrics directly.
Build vs. Buy: Build in-house analytics solutions. It takes only a couple of days to build internal metrics. Building metrics helps understanding of analytics and making educated decisions.
Analytics companies: Google analytics, Kissmetrics, Kontagent, Mixpanel, etc.
Extra points: Add country, email domain, age, gender, locale, etc. to viral factors, retention cohorts and engagement metrics to really understand your user demographic.
Syslogs can be essential data to determine additional engagement metrics.

Enjoy implementing your startup metrics!