A Guide to Leading vs. Lagging Indicators

Overview

• Lagging metrics, or laggard indicators, represent desired results that take a long time to measure.
• Leading metrics help you act fast enough to make progress and optimize the health of your product.

Lagging Metrics

• Lagging metrics point out weaknesses and help you understand what's going wrong.
• They can change the course of action before a problem becomes detrimental.
• Examples include quarterly revenue, conversion rate, and customer satisfaction.

Leading Metrics

• Leading indicators help you reach desired lagging metrics.
• They enable teams to be creative and figure out what leads to desired results.
• Examples include user engagement, feature adoption, and customer feedback.

Using Leading Indicators to Reach Lagging Ones

• To improve lagging metrics, use leading indicators as a means of understanding the root causes of issues.
• For example, to improve conversion rate, analyze user engagement and feature adoption to identify areas of improvement.

Benefits of Lagging Indicators

• Lagging indicators may not be actionable, but they can help teams be creative and find new solutions.
• They provide insights into what is working and what needs improvement.
• They can be used to measure the overall success and health of a product.

Using LogRocket to Optimize Product Health

• LogRocket allows Engineering, Product, UX, and Design teams to work from the same data.
• It helps understand the scope of issues affecting a product and prioritize necessary changes.
• LogRocket simplifies workflows and eliminates confusion about what needs to be done.