As community managers, we often grapple with the question: Is our online developer community truly delivering value? The answer lies in a carefully curated set of metrics that evolve as your community grows and matures.
The Importance of Metrics
Nearly a third of communities fail, and only 13% of community managers feel confident in their ability to measure success
To avoid becoming a statistic, it’s crucial to focus on metrics that demonstrate value for both participants and sponsors.
Stages of Community Development and Relevant Metrics
Early Stage: Foundation and Growth
In the initial phase, focus on:
- Membership growth
- Content creation
- User engagement
Track the number of sign-ups, posts, comments, and active users versus total members
Growth Stage: Deepening Engagement
As the community matures, shift your focus to:
- Quality of contributions
- Percentage of questions answered
- Response times
- User satisfaction
Mature Stage: Impact and Outcomes
For established communities, measure:
- Case deflection (reduction in support tickets)
- Internal efficiency gains
- Developer loyalty
- Product innovation
- Developer sentiment
Calculating ROI
To demonstrate tangible value to executives, consider these approaches:
- Cost Savings Calculation:
If a support ticket costs $6 and the community reduces tickets by 1,000, that’s $6,000 in savings attributable to the community - Sentiment Analysis:
Measure how quickly the community identifies issues compared to pre-community times. This can indirectly tie to renewals, platform growth, or customer satisfaction scores1. - SLA Improvements:
Communities often help meet or exceed service level agreements for issue resolution
Success Stories
- Hortonworks:
- Metrics: Unique visitors by department, overall users, ratio of community users to employees, content volume
- Result: Double-digit weekly growth and strong external growth
- SAP Hybris:
- Metrics: Content growth, new users by group, response time, new Q&As, votes, sentiment, questions with best answers
- Result: Reduced customer support time
Conclusion
Measuring the success of a developer community is not a one-size-fits-all approach. By tailoring your metrics to your community’s stage of development and consistently reassessing your measurement framework, you can effectively track progress, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate value to all stakeholders.Remember, a thriving developer community not only answers questions but also fosters innovation, builds loyalty, and serves as an early warning system for potential issues. By focusing on the right metrics at the right time, you can ensure your community continues to deliver value and grow in meaningful ways.