Measuring stuff, such as time to do a task, workout reps and weight, miles of running is all good because if we measure it, it provides a feedback loop to improve.

But, there is a big BUT:

What gets measured is equally if not more important. For me, measuring pageviews and visits to this blog is not that important. I hardly look at the stats, because for this site, my goal is to speak my mind consistently. I do not write to sell anything, or impress anyone, so why measure those stats. I do measure that I post a blog daily.

For most websites, they should be measuring unique visitors and time on site per user more than page views. I.e. its important for facebook, LinkedIn, mashable and similar sites to measure and optimize how much time people spend on their site. For Google search, they should minimize time on site, because their goais to help users find what they are looking for faster.

With startups, its foolish to measure # of free signups if you are not getting optimal sales conversion on the backend. Of course every business model is different “optimal conversion” will vary business to business.

If we figure out what we should be measuring we can make far better business decisions, such as what defines success for our sales team or user growth team, or business development team.