Product analytics glossary

An experiment that shows two versions of something to comparable groups of users at random and measures which performs better.

The share of new users who reach the first moment of real value in a product within a set time after signing up.

The number of distinct people who did something meaningful in a product during a day, week or month.

The yearly value of a subscription business's recurring revenue, usually monthly recurring revenue × 12.

Revenue in a period divided by the number of users or customers in that period.

A trial of a product or feature with a limited group of real users before general release, to find problems and test value.

The rate at which a company spends more cash than it brings in, usually measured per month.

The tools and practices for collecting, combining and reporting on business data to support decisions.

When a shopper adds products to an online cart but leaves without completing the purchase.

The share of shoppers who start the checkout process but leave before completing their order.

The share of customers or subscribers who stop using or paying for a product during a period.

The share of people who saw a link, ad or message and clicked it.

Analysing groups of users who share a starting point, such as their sign-up week, to compare how each group behaves over time.

The share of visitors or users who complete a goal, such as signing up or buying.

Marketing spend divided by the number of leads it generated.

How easily search engines and other crawlers can find and fetch the pages of a website.

Instructions that tell crawlers what they may fetch, index or follow, given in robots.txt, meta tags or HTTP headers.

Offering an existing customer a different, complementary product or add-on.

The process and cost of winning new customers, from first contact to first purchase.

A survey measure of how easy customers found it to get something done, such as resolving an issue or completing a task.

A single number that combines several measures of how actively a customer uses a product.

Growth in revenue from existing customers through upgrades, more seats or additional products.

The rate at which a company's number of customers grows over a period.

A score that estimates how likely a customer is to stay, renew or grow, based on usage and relationship signals.

The full set of steps a person goes through, from first hearing about a product to becoming and staying a customer.

The stages a customer moves through over their whole relationship with a business, from acquisition to churn or renewal.

A business's ability to keep its customers over time, and the work of doing so.

What a business spends to keep existing customers, such as support, success and loyalty programmes.

A survey measure of how satisfied customers are with a product, service or interaction.

Dividing customers into groups that share characteristics or behaviour, to understand and serve them better.

The number of distinct people who did something meaningful in a product on a given day.

Daily active users divided by monthly active users: the share of monthly users who use a product on a typical day.

The degree to which people use a digital product or tool to its full intended value.

The share of people who interacted with a product, page or piece of content out of everyone who saw it.

Additional recurring revenue from existing customers through upgrades, extra seats or add-ons.

The share of active users who used a specific feature in a period.

The share of users on a free plan who upgrade to a paid plan.

A pricing model that offers a basic product free forever and charges for advanced features, more usage or more seats.

Revenue minus the direct cost of delivering it, as a share of revenue.

Rapid, experiment-driven work across product and marketing to find cheap, scalable ways to grow.

Messages shown to users inside a product, such as tooltips, banners and announcements, to guide or inform them.

A framework that explains product choices by the job a customer is trying to get done, rather than by who the customer is.

Key performance indicator: a measurable value a team commits to improving because it reflects progress toward a goal.

The month-over-month growth rate of qualified leads, used as an early indicator of future revenue.

An estimate of the total margin a business earns from a customer over their whole relationship.

Customer lifetime value divided by customer acquisition cost: how much a customer is worth for every dollar spent to win them.

An HTML tag that tells search engines whether a page may be indexed and whether its links may be followed.

Measuring how people find, use and keep using a mobile app.

The number of distinct people who did something meaningful in a product over a 30-day period.

The predictable revenue a subscription business earns each month from active subscriptions.

The percentage change in monthly recurring revenue from one month to the next.

The share of recurring revenue kept from existing customers over a period, including expansion and after churn and downgrades.

A directive that tells search engines not to show a page in their results.

Net Promoter Score: a loyalty measure based on how likely customers are to recommend a product, from −100 to 100.

Website visits that come from unpaid search results.

One load of a web page in a browser, recorded by an analytics tool.

Website visits that come from paid advertising, such as search, social or display ads.

Users who have shown, through how they use a product, that they are likely to become paying customers.

How much of a product people use, or how often, measured per user or account.

The point where a product satisfies a real market need well enough that customers keep using it and growth comes more easily.

Website visits that arrive from links on other websites.

The share of customers or users who stay over a period.

The share of recurring revenue lost in a period through cancellations and downgrades.

A projection of yearly revenue based on revenue from a recent period, such as a month or a quarter.

A text file at the root of a website that tells crawlers which URLs they may fetch.

One page that shows the few numbers a SaaS team uses to judge growth, engagement and retention.

How long a visit or app session lasts, from the first interaction to the last.

How long it takes a new user to get the first real benefit from a product.

The first stage of the customer journey, where people first become aware of a product.

A single view of a customer that combines their data from different systems and touchpoints.

Encouraging an existing customer to buy a higher plan, more seats or a larger version of what they already use.

The process that takes a new user from sign-up to their first real success with a product.

Tags added to a link's URL that tell analytics tools the source, medium and campaign of a visit.

The average number of new users each existing user brings in through invitations or referrals.

An automated program that fetches web pages, to index them for search, collect training data or answer a person's question.

The share of sales opportunities that end in a closed deal.

An HTTP response header that gives crawlers indexing instructions for any file, including PDFs and images.

A search where the person gets their answer on the results page and doesn't click through to any website.