Identifying the growth levers means determining what the growth priority for the app is, depending on the state and need of the project: gaining more users? Retaining more users? Turning more users into paying customers? That process of identifying the right growth levers must be rigorously scientific (based on data).
There are lots of different metrics: the number of users, the number of daily logins, the number of messages sent per user per day, etc. But the metrics that matter depend on the project.
Example : the number of daily visits doesn’t matter for Airbnb, what matters is the number of nights booked per user per booking. But the number of daily visits matter a lot for Facebook or Twitter.
Therefore, it’s possible to create an “equation" that takes as parameters all key metrics for the project, or in other words, a list of metrics that deserve attention. This equation may be arbitrary, but what counts is to see how the result of the equation varies in time so to see wether growth is increasing or not.
Example: Amazon
VERTICAL EXPANSION x PRODUCT INVENTORY PER VERTICAL x TRAFFIC PER PRODUCT PAGE x CONVERSION TO PURCHASE x AVERAGE PURCHASE VALUE x REPEAT PURCHASE BEHAVIOR = REVENUE GROWTH
It can be very useful to select one metric to focus on (it can be chosen from the growth equation). This metric must matter for the project, and will play a role in future decisions regarding growth hacking. As the North Star, this metric will become a guiding light for the team. Sometimes a team can get lost in the sea of available metrics and lose sight of the goal, so this North Star can guide it back on the right tracks.
To be easily understood, the data mustn’t be raw. It needs to be formatted so to be easily understandable. Graphs can help with visualization, and data processing can help with interpretation, such as ratios. Also, it is important to be able to compare data.