The real cost of ignoring defining success metrics

The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. Nobody bills you for neglecting defining success metrics. The cost shows up somewhere else.

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Where the cost lands

• Time spent on work that should not have been necessary
• Enquiries that quietly never arrive
• Agree the numbers before the work starts
• Rework, once the problem is finally visible

Traffic is not a business outcome. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Turning this into a decision

Pick metrics you can actually influence. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

The short version

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about defining success metrics before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Agree the numbers before the work starts — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.