Your activity metrics are up. Revenue is flat. What's wrong?

Your activity metrics are up. Revenue is flat. What’s wrong? You’re measuring activity, not effectiveness.

Usage metrics tell you people are touching your product. They don’t tell you if your product is working.

Real example: I once consulted a founder whose platform saw a sharp increase in usage.

Impressive metric. But here’s what it didn’t show:

• How long users spent frustrated versus productive
• How many workflows required manual workarounds
• Which features generated revenue versus just engagement

My advise? I told him not to optimize for clicks and engagement, but instead, to measure workflow efficiency:

• Time to complete core tasks
• Manual intervention required
• Support tickets per user

Those metrics did a better job of predicting revenue growth. Raw activity was a side effect.

The difference: Activity metrics measure what users do. Workflow metrics measure how well your product helps them do it.

If you’re optimizing for engagement, you get engagement.
If you’re optimizing for efficiency, you get revenue.

Most startups chase vanity metrics because they’re easy to track and good for fundraising decks. But investors care about retention and revenue, both driven by workflow effectiveness.

Ask yourself: Are you measuring if people use your product, or if your product works?

Those are very different questions with very different answers.

What’s your most misleading “good” metric?