Getting users to complete specific tasks and getting their feedback (both active and through passive observation) provides valuable qualitative (and quantitative) usage data. Silverback, Screenflow and Ethio are leading tools I use for this.

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From the diluge of off-the-shelf metrics available, it’s important to identity key metrics that allow us to monitor a product’s journey toward (or away) from it’s KPI’s. Building in capacity to gather custom project-relative metrics is also important, this can be built in with custom code, or plugged in via 3rd-party services.

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