产品经理必看：终于有人把数据指标讲明白了

Article Summary: Understanding Business Metrics and Indicators

The article explores the fluctuating nature of business data and the essence of data indicators in the context of reporting and analysis. Data indicators are quantifiable tools that help describe abstract events and reflect the scale, degree, and proportion of a business within a unit of time. Indicators such as Daily Active Users (DAU) are integral to assessing the health of products and are typically categorized into product overview, traffic-related, and customer value indicators.

1. What are Indicators?

Indicators are prevalent in everyday life, from national metrics like GDP to personal income assessments. They are essential for quantifying aspects of a product's performance, assisting in decision-making processes. Product managers and analysts frequently work with indicators such as DAU, conversion rates, and transaction volumes. Indicators quantify the abstract and provide a numerical representation of business health and growth.

2. Fundamental Components of Indicators

Designing new indicators involves understanding their business and technical components. Indicators can be customized to specific business needs, such as the unique "order cancellation rate" used to identify potentially malicious ordering behaviors. However, blindly copying indicators from online repositories without understanding their definitions often leads to inaccuracies. Instead, indicators should be crafted based on an understanding of their business and technical dimensions, including clear business requirements and the technical logic needed for implementation.

3. Indicator Systems

Advancing from individual indicators, the concept of an indicator system is introduced. It is a collection of logically combined indicators that reflect and locate the root causes of business issues. The key to a reliable indicator system is selecting a range of meaningful indicators that close the feedback loop and drive business decisions based on core business drivers. Core indicators are aligned with the primary actions a business wants its users to perform, such as purchasing on an e-commerce platform or watching videos on a streaming service.

Appendix: Common Indicator Checklist

The article concludes with a list of commonly used indicators across user data, behavior data, and product data. These include new user additions, activity rates, retention rates, PV/UV, conversion rates, GMV, and ARPU, among others. Proper selection and usage of these indicators lead to better understanding and growth of the product.

The detailed exploration of data indicators will continue in future articles, and readers are encouraged to refer to the book "Advanced Product Manager's Required Course: Building a Data System Driven by Corporate Strategy" for a more comprehensive understanding of advanced product knowledge.