Vanity Metrics 101: How To Identify (and Avoid) Vanity Metrics

There’s no shortage of data to gauge your business performance, but not all metrics are created equal. Vanity metrics—or numbers that look impressive but don’t necessarily translate into business success in any meaningful way—can lead to poor business decisions if misused.

Imagine a company celebrating a huge spike in website traffic after a viral campaign. On paper, the numbers look impressive, but closer analysis reveals that the visitors aren’t converting into leads or sales. By focusing on the traffic metric alone, the company diverts resources into replicating the campaign instead of addressing deeper issues like audience targeting, product-market fit, or conversion rate optimization. That misstep wastes budget and time on numbers that don’t drive growth.

You need actionable metrics—data that drive informed decisions and real results. Here’s how to identify vanity metrics and swap them out for alternatives that will yield more actionable insights for your marketing efforts.

What are vanity metrics?

Vanity metrics are overly simplistic data points that are not a real reflection of your company’s true performance. Total follower count, page views, and app downloads are common vanity metrics in marketing and sales contexts. Used in isolation, they may suggest popularity, but they don’t provide context around what truly drives revenue, like active use or customer retention. These numbers can be encouraging, but they’re often misleading and offer little strategic value.

Danny Buck, co-founder of CRAFTD London, a successful direct-to-consumer (DTC) men’s jewelry line, stressed the importance of staying grounded when it comes to metrics. “There’s no shame in being small and profitable. Ignore the ego side of it and don’t compare,” he says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast.

Having 10,000 social media followers might feel like a win, but if your engagement metrics are low, your social media strategy isn’t connecting with the right target audience. Without meaningful interaction or conversions, these followers aren’t driving real value for your business.

Vanity metrics vs. actionable metrics

The best way to tell the difference between vanity and actionable metrics is to see how closely a metric correlates to revenue. Let’s explore both in a bit more detail:

Vanity metrics

Numbers like social media followers, page views, and app downloads all make your marketing campaign look good on paper, but, on their own, they don’t tell you whether your campaign is actually paying off and translating into consistent sales.

For instance, you could have a very high number of app downloads, but very low active users, which signals that your business is not as successful as you might have otherwise thought. The same goes for page views. They are important for visibility, but without knowing how many of those visitors actually convert, they don’t get you very far. In other words, without more context, vanity metrics are just numbers on a dashboard.

Actionable metrics

Actionable metrics, on the other hand, are numbers that can give you a more accurate picture of how your business is doing, especially when viewed in tandem with numbers that can otherwise be vanity metrics. They are metrics such as conversion rate, click-through rate, active users, customer lifetime value (CLV), and qualified leads.

A high email open rate might look good, for example, but it's the click-through rate that really tells you whether people are engaging with your offers. In the same way, page views combined with conversion rate can give you a fuller picture of how well your funnel is working. The key is not to discard any metrics altogether, but to use them in the context of one another to understand reach and impact.

How to identify vanity metrics: 5 indicators

1. They don’t directly correlate to business objectives
2. They don’t provide context
3. They’re easily manipulated
4. They focus on quantity, not quality
5. They don’t reflect active behavior

Vanity metrics tend to look impressive on paper, but they’re poor indicators of success. Your data points may be vanity metrics if:

1. They don’t directly correlate to business objectives

When you review metrics, consider whether they’re tied to clear business objectives. If a data point doesn’t translate back to total customers, revenue, or retention, it’s probably not a great metric for strategic planning. Say one of your social media posts goes viral and triples your website traffic overnight, but none of these new visitors join your email list or make a purchase. The spike hasn’t moved you much closer to the primary business goals you set for raising revenue and email subscriptions.

2. They don’t provide context

Without context, you can’t tell the difference between customer engagement and empty clicks.

Meaningful metrics are often a lot more contextual. A boost in web traffic might seem great, but if another related metric, such as bounce rate, is also high, it means few visitors are sticking around. In isolation, a high traffic number could lead you to think your recent digital ad campaign is effective. But in combination with a high bounce rate, these numbers strongly suggest you’re not reaching the right audience and need to rethink your targeting strategy.

Total app downloads are an equally limited metric compared to more actionable metrics such as monthly active users or daily active users, which tell you whether your app’s features keep people engaged.

3. They’re easily manipulated

Vanity metrics are often easy to inflate. You can buy social media followers, for example, but that doesn’t mean your sales are going up. If you can inflate the metric without improving customer value, it’s not a reliable business performance signal.

4. They focus on quantity, not quality

Big totals aren’t necessarily a sign of success. A list of 1,000 low-quality leads is far less valuable than 50 leads that are actually interested in your business. Vanity metrics are often flashy, large numbers that don't give you much in the way of valuable insights or actionable data to work with.

5. They don’t reflect active behavior

Metrics that don’t capture real user behavior or outcomes are usually vanity metrics. For example, new users or time spent on site can look like strong data points, but if conversion rates are low, it’s a sign to re-evaluate your marketing campaign. Unlike new users, conversion rates show you the percentage of people who are taking steps that you want, and can help you make informed decisions.

Tips for identifying actionable metrics

• Set benchmarks to track real progress
• Balance metrics with qualitative insights
• Ensure your data reflects reality

Here’s how to identify and use more meaningful data points:

Set benchmarks to track real progress

Numbers are only meaningful when you have something to measure them against, which is why it’s important to establish benchmarks that can show you whether or not you’re improving over time. Begin by gathering at least a few months of data before you set your goals.

This gives you a baseline that accounts for seasonal changes or any other cyclical or natural fluctuations in consumer behavior. Once you do, you can decide what improvement looks like. For example, you may decide on a 10% increase in conversion rate as an ambitious yet achievable goal if you notice you’re already yielding a 5% increase in conversions month by month as is.

Balance metrics with qualitative insights

Numbers can show you what’s happening but can’t always explain why. To better understand your data, use surveys, interviews, or focus groups to add depth to your data. For example, you might see a sudden increase in traffic or an unexpected drop in conversions, but not understand why. Customer feedback can help you identify the reasons behind those changes and whether you need to refine your strategies.

Ensure your data reflects reality

Numbers are only as useful as their relevance to your business. Metrics that might have been useful in one year, like sign-ups or follower growth, can become less relevant as your business grows and starts to focus more on retention and customer lifetime value. Review the metrics you track at least once a year to make sure they still align with your goals. What mattered at launch might not be the most relevant metric at a later stage.