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tags: Product
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# **Metrics for Alkemio**
An analysis of how to track progress, for the whole initiative as well as per persona.

The topic of metrics is relevant at the platform aggregate level (for us, for the community) as well as the context of a Hub or even a Challenge (for the community around that topic).

## **North star / initiative metrics**
How to measure the ultimate value delivered in line with the purpose? How it is built up from sub-metrics?.And then make that visible across the whole organization e.g. every sprint review.

There are some well known examples out there:
- [Netflix approach](https://www.cram.com/essay/Key-Performance-Indicators-For-Netflix/FJY93FLL6G): Average hours watched per user (usage)

Note that there is also a hierarchy of potential metrics.


This also ties into the pricing model ultimately...

### Reference
https://growwithward.com/north-star-metric/

### **Big picture: what is the ideal situation, if everything goes perfectly?**

- Big breakthroughs being made on challenges by using Alkemio
- Lots of people actively using the platform, making contributions, and sharing Alkemio and challenge information with their friends and colleagues
- Good publicity for the challenges, and the lead organizations, on other media platforms
- Strong growth in users with a high retention rate driven by a quality product and strong support

## **Metrics per persona**

### **What metrics do organizations that lead challenges want to see?**

**Focus** : That the challenges are making progress and getting more people involved, and good publicity for the challenge and the lead organization

**Growth**

- How many people have 'joined' your challenge, and the growth rate of this number.

**Demographics**

- The demographics of those people should also be of interest, including how many are from outside of the lead organizations (i.e. people who completely voluntarily signed up to help the challenge), and the type/location (type of organisation they work for, industry, country, etc.) of the people. Depending on the demographics, the challenge lead organization may want to tailor the focus of the challenge, including updates, opportunities, etc. a bit to maximize the engagement of those people

**Activity**

- How many people 'clicked on' your challenge to find out more information, without joining it (page views), and how many people 'liked' it, etc.
- How active are the users on your challenges, and is it increasing?
- Tracking the causes of spikes and troughs in (i) new people joining the challenge and (ii) activity. Such as a spike after a new opportunity is started?
- How many leaders of other challenges reached out to share information/resources/ideas, especially if the challenges are similar
- How many times is the challenge being commented on by third parties, implying it is getting peoples' attention.
- How many times is the challenge being ''shared'? Note there is an [epic related to sharing](https://github.com/alkem-io/client-web/issues/2060) (a) on Alkemio itself, and (b) on external platforms such as LinkedIn.

**Success**

- Is there any way to measure if a challenge is making progress towards a solution?

**Other considerations**

- Need to consider what metrics are shared with only the lead organization as opposed to being visible to all those involved in the challenge

### **What metrics do individual users want to see?**

**Focus** : Activity levels on my challenges, any interesting new challenges for me, and reactions to my contributions

**Growth**

- How many new challenges there are, in total, and the rate of growth
- How many new challenges there are that match my stated interests

**Activity**

- How many updates/new opportunities/new canvases, etc. there are on my challenges
- How many new people have signed up for / liked /shared the challenges I am a member of
- How many people have reacted to my contributions (updates/comments/insights)

**Success**

- Is there progress being made on these challenges

### **What metrics do potential investors want to see?**

**Focus** : How much the platform is being used, and the growth rate in key user/revenue statistics. And what the value of the platform is to potential sponsors/advertisers.

**Growth**

- Rate of increase in user numbers, paying customers, contributions per person, etc.
- Drivers of growth. Stated reason for becoming a user: is it due to a referral from a friend; or advertising; or 'my company is hosting challenges'

**Activity**

- Activity levels of users, and the growth rates. Number of times per day that a person accesses the platform, and the number of minutes spent on it per day; number of contributions per week per person
- How many notifications go out to users per day, on average, and how often do they lead to actions by the users

**Revenues**

- Number of paying customers, and average monthly payment; break this down by each category
- How long it takes to get a paying customer to sign up
- Rate of conversion of trial users into actual users
- Percentage of users that renew their subscriptions, per category
- How many paying users complain about the prices, or that will only subscribe/renew by getting discounts
- How much visibility is the platform, and its challenges, getting on other media, and is this increasing (likely to lead to more users/subscribers and greater revenue, including sponsorship/advertising revenue)
- Is progress being made on challenges, leading to more potential users/revenue and sponsorship/advertising

**Costs**

- Amount of support needed per person, when joining the platform and then on an ongoing basis
- Average employee costs and turnover rates

**Various**

- How to get people to click on what they see on Alkemio; media platforms are increasingly focused on doing what it takes to get you to do a quick click, as opposed to building up a valuable brand
- Will there be a general 'news feed' like there is on LinkedIn, that you can scroll through, like, comment on, share, and send

## **Reference - background from Neil**

Note that metrics should be both in the aggregate platform level, but also ideally available for each hub.

- **Activity related metrics** : daily active users, challenge / opportunity / aspect totals + growth over time, # comments daily,

- **Connectivity related metrics** : number of users, number of organizations, number of membership (e.g. user to a hub is 1, user to a challenge is another etc).
- Net promoter score (nps): this is a more generic approach to look at engagement