Beyond Vanity Metrics: Identifying True Value in Your KPIs

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Tracking your performance is the best way to understand (and course-correct) your business growth. 

Your key performance indicators (KPIs) should measure your business performance and provide insight into how to reach your next goal. But some distract from the bigger picture. 

Some metrics look impressive without moving the needle on revenue, profit, or any other objective. Those are vanity metrics—surface signals of being seen without proof of follow-through. 

Dashboards are packed with them. According to Forbes, 41% of marketing KPIs are vanity metrics.

For real results, shift your focus to action metrics that tie directly to business growth.

Action vs. Vanity Metrics: What’s the Difference?

Let’s start at the beginning. 

Key performance indicators are metrics you select to track your business’s performance. They measure progress toward strategic goals—whether those are financial, operational, customer-focused, or otherwise.

Common and effective action metrics include:

• Conversion rate
• Revenue growth
• Customer retention

Action metrics signal meaningful growth or goal achievement (e.g., gaining and retaining long-term customers).

Vanity metrics, on the other hand, can look impressive without progressing toward any milestone. The “vanity” part means they do little more than make you feel good.

What is and isn’t a vanity metric depends on the context and overarching business goals.

So—with exceptions—common vanity metrics include:

• Page views
• Email open rates
• Instagram followers

Each of these metrics implies interest and popularity, but provides little in actionable information. 

Let’s take Instagram followers. 

If your business profile has 150k followers, you might say, “Hey, we’re a pretty popular brand.”

But that number offers no data about your business performance, sales volume, or marketing outcomes unless you’re a career influencer or social media manager.

In short, tracking vanity metrics is like guiding your decisions with a vote by applause, where action metrics tally up actual ballots.

When Vanity Metrics Start to Harm

Relying on vanity metrics can:

• Make weak campaigns look strong
• Create a false sense of success
• Waste your marketing budget
• Delay important decisions
  
  

If a KPI doesn’t help you understand how your business is performing or what to do next, it’s just noise.

You might be wondering, “What’s the harm in tracking vanity metrics?”

The answer, in theory, is none.

Tracking vanity metrics offers some surface-level information. It can even be fun and motivating to watch those numbers grow.

Problems arise when vanity metrics start guiding your marketing strategy.

When overemphasized, vanity metrics pull attention away from real progress. 

• When a vanity metric is growing, you might falsely assume your business is on the right track.
• When it’s lower than you’d like, you might invest in a campaign to pump up numbers that don’t matter. 

The first step to avoiding these pitfalls is knowing which metrics matter for your business.

Which KPI Is Most Likely to Be a Vanity Metric?

Identifying unhelpful KPIs may seem simple, but choosing the right metrics to track takes practice. Because so many ecommerce KPIs are interrelated, sniffing out vanity metrics is easier said than done.

We’ve already mentioned a few examples of measures that lack deep meaning, but here are some vanity metrics that are harder to spot:

1. Ad Impressions

Impressions record how many times your ad appears on someone’s screen. The counter moves even if a viewer scrolls past in the blink of an eye.

Wide reach is helpful during a pure awareness campaign—such as a product launch or rebrand—where your top goal is simply getting noticed.

Past that, impressions lose power. A big number can mask unfocused targeting and wasted resources on the wrong audiences. Even bots can bulk up the total, giving a false sense of scale.

Tracking impression growth also tempts teams to shock value over sales. That mis‑alignment can snowball into rising ad spend with flat revenue.

Instead of impressions, measure:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC) – dollars required to win one buyer.
  
  
• Return on ad spend (ROAS) – revenue generated for every ad dollar.
  
  

2. Clicks

A click tells you that your headline, image, or caption was interesting enough to earn a tap. For A/B testing different creatives, that signal is useful.

Clicks, however, stop at curiosity. They don’t report who left immediately, who was a bot, or who had buying intent. An ad can rack up cheap clicks from broad audiences yet fail to earn sales.

Optimizing purely for click volume often produces “clickbait” ads that drive traffic but not trust. When customers feel misled, conversion costs rise and brand equity slips.

Use click data only as an upstream diagnostic. Pair it with later stage metrics to confirm whether your outreach is working.

Forget clicks, measure:

• Click‑to‑purchase rate – percentage of clicks that become customers.
  
  
• Revenue per click (RPC) – average dollars earned per visit.
  
  

3. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

MQLs are prospects who hit a minimum threshold—like downloading a guide or joining a webinar—suggesting they may eventually buy.

Though a necessary waypoint in many B2B funnels, the number alone is misleading. A long list can hide low lead quality and drain resources needed for nurturing prospective buyers to the next step.

When teams chase MQL quantity over quality, cost per lead drops, yet cost per closed deal often climbs. 

Shift to metrics that prove buyer intention, not just interest:

• Conversion rate – share of MQLs that become customers.
  
  
• Cost per acquisition (CPA) – spend required for a new paying customer.
  
  

4. Web Traffic

Traffic tallies every session on your site, regardless of their time spent on-site. High numbers can feel validating and indicate improvements in brand visibility.

But traffic volume doesn’t indicate intent. If visitors bounce quickly or abandon carts, you’re hosting a parade that never walks into the store. 

Common culprits include untargeted ads, unfocused SEO keywords, or slow page loading times. 

More revealing metrics include:

• Conversion Rate – how many visitors take meaningful actions, like making a purchase or filling out a form.
  
  
• Revenue per session – average dollars earned during a web visit.
  
  

5. Cart Additions

Adding items to a cart signals product interest and can help forecast demand.

However, many carts become virtual wish lists. Shoppers compare prices, wait for payday, or simply forget. Those abandoned carts can inflate projections and create false optimism.

A high add‑to‑cart rate paired with low checkout completion exposes friction—surprise fees, confusing UX, or weak trust signals. 

Tracking cart additions is like counting eggs before they hatch.

Track how effectively you turn intent into income:

• Cart‑to‑purchase rate – carts that progress to orders.
  
  
• Abandoned cart recovery rate – reclaimed revenue from follow‑ups.
  
  

6. Total Registered Users

Registrations count how many people make a profile, subscribe to a free plan, or install an app.

Investors and partners love big user bases, but inactive accounts bring no engagement, referrals, or revenue. They also inflate support costs and muddy product‑market fit assessments.

If many users sign up but few remain active, it suggests problems with getting new users started or a lack of perceived value. If unaddressed, this can lead to bad reviews.

Instead, look at:

• Activation rate – new users who complete a key value action.
  
  
• Monthly active users (MAU) – the number of users who interact on any given month.
  
  

7. Domain Authority

Domain Authority (or Domain Rating) is a third‑party score predicting how well a site could rank in search.

It’s helpful for competitive benchmarking and tracking SEO efforts, but Google does not use DA directly. Obsessing over the score can even lead to shady link‑building tactics that risk penalties. 

Meanwhile, lower‑DA competitors will still outrank you if their content is better suited to the audience.

Anchor SEO success to metrics that reflect traffic quality and revenue impact, not theoretical popularity.

Replace DA rankings with these SEO measures:

• Organic conversion rate – leads or sales from organic search sessions.
  
  
• Keyword ROI – a measure of whether the keywords you rank for actually contribute to business goals, not just traffic.
  
  

8. Email List Size

Subscriber count shows potential reach each time you hit “send.” Bigger lists can support segmentation and look impressive in reports.

However, inactive contacts hurt sender reputation, inflate platform costs, and depress engagement averages. Internet service providers (ISPs) may route bulk, low‑engagement senders to spam, eroding returns.

Quality lists grow through clear value exchange: useful content, timely offers, and respectful cadence. Pruning your list sustains deliverability and cost-effectiveness.

Treat your list like a VIP lounge, not a contact warehouse.

Try measuring:

• Revenue per subscriber – average dollars earned per contact.
  
  
• Engaged segment growth – trend of active, clicking readers.
  
  

9. Email Open Rates

Open rate tracks how many recipients load the tracking pixel in an email. Historically, it has mainly been guided by subject-line testing.

Today, privacy tools auto‑open images, and many users block tracking pixels altogether. Results fluctuate wildly, reflecting tech quirks more than human interest.

Relying on opens can mask declining content relevance. It also tempts marketers to use clickbait subjects that inflate opens but lower trust.

Shift focus to metrics that require active engagement or spending.

Supplement open rates with these on your metrics dashboard:

• Click‑through rate (CTR) – recipients who clicked on content in the email.
  
  
• Email‑driven revenue – sales attributed to email marketing.
  
  

10. Social Media Followers

Follower count signals how many accounts chose to follow your profile, boosting social proof.

But bots, inactive users, and passive scrollers inflate the total. A brand can add 10,000 followers overnight with giveaways, yet see zero lift in sales.

Algorithm changes can also throttle organic reach, making big follower pools less valuable over time. Engagement and conversion reveal true influence.

Treat social as a relationship builder: spark dialogue, build intrigue, and share your story.

Instead of raw follower counts, prioritize:

• Engagement‑to‑reach ratio – interactions per impression.
  
  
• Revenue per social session – sales tied to social traffic.
  
  

Identifying Vanity Metrics in Your KPIs

So, how do you recognize the KPIs that inflate your ego and waste your time?

The easiest way to find those sneaky vanity metrics is to define your business objectives. 

Looking to increase year-over-year revenue growth? To improve your return on ad spend (ROAS)? To better your blog’s performance?

Whatever you’re after, name it and attach some measurable benchmarks to it. 

From here on, anything that doesn’t directly impact your goals is a vanity metric.

How to Tell If a KPI Is a Vanity Metric

Ask yourself these three questions. If the answer is no, you’re looking at a vanity metric.

1. Can I make a decision based on this?
2. Does this show business impact (leads, sales, costs)?
3. Would I talk about this in a board meeting?

If a metric doesn’t change how you run the business, it doesn’t matter.

What to Track Instead: Metrics That Matter

Focusing on numbers that prove customers buy, stay, and advocate for your brand will sharpen every budget decision.

Revenue growth tells you whether sales are climbing or stalling over time. Compare month‑over‑month and year‑over‑year figures to spot actionable trends.

Revenue by source breaks sales down by channel—email, search, social, referrals, and more—so you can double down on winners and trim money pits that bring traffic but no cash.

Customer retention is one of the best quality indicators, keeping costs low and revenue predictable. Watch these signals:

• Churn rate – how many customers leave.
  
  
• Average customer lifespan – how long buyers stick around.
  
  
• Repeat purchase rate – how often customers come back.
  
  

Net Promoter Score (NPS) distills loyalty into a single figure between –100 and 100. Higher scores mean happier customers, stronger referrals, and steadier growth.

Conversion rate turns raw traffic into a bottom‑line lens. Even small lifts here compound revenue without extra ad spend, especially when you segment by device and channel.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) divides all marketing and sales spend by the number of new paying customers. Paired with customer lifetime value, CAC shows whether your growth engine is efficient or burning cash.

Track these action metrics, and leave behind those vanity measures.

For a deeper breakdown, download our Free Guide to Ecommerce KPIs.

How to Keep Your Team Focused on What Matters

1. Set clear, outcome‑based goals.
   Start with the finish line: more customers, higher revenue, or lower costs. Tie every KPI the team tracks to one of those outcomes. At Human, we brief clients on this before we ever present a dashboard.
   
   
2. Ask, “What happened because of this?”
   A metric earns its place when it explains cause and effect. Each number on the screen must tell you what changed, why it changed, and what to do next. Our analysts build reports that answer those questions in one glance.
   
   
3. Reward results, not activity.
   Prioritize jumps in revenue, profit, or retention, not reach, clicks, or likes. Celebrate the results that really count to align efforts with activities that pay the bills.
   
   
4. Keep reports simple and concise.
   Any measure in a report that doesn’t drive a decision is clutter. Limit your metrics to information that guides budget shifts, creative updates, or customer follow‑ups. 
   
   

Final Takeaway: Track What Moves the Business

Don’t let flashy numbers distract you from what matters. As a business owner, you need metrics that help you act, not just numbers that look good.

Focus on KPIs that:

• Save you money, trimming wasted spend.
  
  
• Help you grow, proving revenue lifts.
  
  
• Show what’s working, and what isn’t, so you can pivot fast.

If a metric doesn’t guide a better decision, it’s a vanity distraction. Every number should tell a clear story and point to a next step. 

All KPIs tell a story about your performance, but it’s what you do with those measurements that defines your success. 

When you know which vanity metrics to ignore and which KPIs to hone in on, you can reach your goals more efficiently.

Human can help you assess, select, and monitor the KPIs that matter. Connect with our team today and turn your data into decisions that fuel growth. 

Get in touch with us to learn more.