Addition by Subtraction -- Killing Metrics That Distract
Avinash Kaushik's post on the "3 Levels of So-What?" is a great test to see if you're tracking the right metrics for your site. In short, up and down arrows are great, but if they don't lead you to actions that push toward your ultimate "more ... goal" (subscribers, sharing, linkbacks, sales, etc.) -- they're just consuming your precious time.
Remember, we don't want to have metrics because they are nice to have, and there are tons of those.
We want to have metrics that answer business questions and allow us to take action—do more of something or less of something or at least funnel ideas that we can test and then take action.
The "so what" test is one mechanism for identifying metrics that you should focus on or metrics that you should ditch because although they might work for others, for you they don't pass the "so what" test.
And killing metrics is not such a bad thing. After all this is the process that has been proven to work time and time again:
