Why don’t we just use the same metrics for every website, every business?

The answer sounds obvious when you first ask—“Because they’re different, duh!”—but that’s an awfully hollow answer. Fundamental questions like this deserve more attention.

If every business needs money to survive, why not just measure all businesses by the money they make and call it a day? That would be simpler, right? If that’s all businesses did (making money) then sure, I’d say yeah, that’s true. But that money comes from somewhere—a whole bunch of different places, actually. Every business gets money in a different way (and spends it, invests it, etc.).

Look at it another way: if businesses were like running (the sport—and I apologize in advance to all my runner friends out there) you could just measure how fast people run and that’d be enough. But business is more complex—it’s more like football than running. Sure, football players run (read: American football) but they also tackle, dodge, catch, throw, huddle, kick, coordinate, strategize, defend, and score to win a game. There are more functions to measure, more moving parts, more types of performance. It’s not just about how fast players run, it’s how well the whole team works together to outscore their opponents.

“But Tanner, why not just measure win-loss records for football teams?”

Good point… I suppose whether you’re talking about business, running, or football, you could always just pick one metric and say, “This is the only thing that matters!”

So why care about anything else?

Because we want to know whether we’ll win the next game.

We want to know whether we’ll keep winning. And if not, then what should we improve? What do we need to do to win next time?

Win-loss records and quarterly earnings don’t tell you whether you’re going to win next time (let alone how to win). They’re measures of progress, sure, but they’re not performance indicators—they don’t predict future success.

Performance drivers, performance indicators, help you prepare for the next game, the next race, the next customer.

“How did we do the last time around?” We made money, great, but was the customer satisfied? Will they come back? If we didn’t make money, why not? Did the customer cancel? Why did they abandon their cart?

One data point won’t do. We need a story to answer these questions. We need judgement and decision-making. We need strategy.

That’s where I’m at now with performance: how do you decide what to pay attention to, what to measure, what to prioritize and improve? It all depends on goals and strategy—but strategy is so misunderstood. Every optimization has consequences. How do you know which ones are worth it?

Past results don’t predict future results. We need a guiding policy, a strategy, something to help define our key performance indicators—the drivers that lead to success.

If web performance is how well your website provides value to people, then optimizing performance means focusing on the features that matter most.