Signs it is time to revisit defining success metrics

There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. A few signals that defining success metrics is due some attention.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Agree the numbers before the work starts
• Traffic is not a business outcome

Where to start

Pick metrics you can actually influence. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

What this looks like day to day

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about defining success metrics before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Traffic is not a business outcome — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.