# Tactical Steps for Startup Metrics

DevFeed: [Tactical Steps for Startup Metrics](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/tactical-steps-for-startup-metrics-41088.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.craigkerstiens.com/2011/02/03/Tactical-Steps-for-Startup-Metrics/>)

Author: Map

Published: 2011-02-04T03:39:54Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Craig Kerstiens](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/craig-kerstiens.md>)

Topics: [Google Analytics](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/google-analytics.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>)

Tags: [analytics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/analytics.md>), [google-analytics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/google-analytics.md>), [metrics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/metrics.md>), [startup](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startup.md>)

## AI overview

A practical guide to using Google Analytics for startup metrics. It explains how to configure goals, event tracking with values, and custom reports to measure product and user activity.

## Source excerpt

Metrics are obviously a very valuable area for start-ups, if you don't believe in metrics and think you're idea wins just because its great then you better start searching for your next day job. Dave McClure has done a great talk on start-ups several times over, you can check out a video and corresponding slide show at: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5336115 http://www.slideshare.net/dmc500hats/startup-metrics-for-pirates-long-version And besides, it's a pirates acronym, so it's got to be great. But translating these from concept to actual technology metrics is also something that needs discussion. You can't exactly say we're going to use Google Analytics and let it magically tell you everything, furthermore all of the web developers out there talking about tweaks on Google Analytics do little to actually tell you what you need to know. To start with I'm going to lay out a few of the key features of Google Analytics, assuming it's the key backbone for web analytics, and because it really is an amazing free tool.If you're not familiar with google analytics go and explore before reading this, we're going to skip right over the basics of what are visitors and traffic sources directly to what you need to use and customise to get valuable metrics for a start-up. Diving right in a few key items: Goals - These are custom items that you want to setup. What is a goal? Well that can be a bit abstract but it can be a specific page that was visited, time spent on the site, or a certain number of pages per visit. Events - Here you can start track events to any type of your liking. In most cases this can be some in page action, but the key here is to each event you can track a value. This starts to become useful if you want to track most shared content, most liked products, or other items. Typically those kinds of items might exist within your in-house database, but exposing it to Google Analytics gives you an extra level of reporting integration Custom Reporting - Google is grea