Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

It depends on your aims. You can focus on revenue generated by your new service, contribution to bottom line, market share, etc. How many of your regular customers buy in to your new service and so on.
The main question is what made you introduce this service.

Adam

Dear Omarfdawood,

Why not just ask "How long is a piece of string?" Sorry to be flippant here but your measure of "success" depends on all kinds of questions:

Which market?
Which niche?
Investment in marketing in terms of time and money.
How many did you sell?
How many were returned?
Over what period?
At what price?
Against which competitors?
With what guarantees?
Accompanied by what offer?
With which benefits?
With what value?
Solving which problems or pain points?
With what message?
With what specific call to action?

And so on. It's not possible (nor is it useful) to measure things randomly against any old haphazard thing. If you do, you'll fail. Maybe not today. Or even next week or next month. But soon.

Specify your aims, objectives, and timelines (where you're going how you're going to get there, and by when), THEN set about fixing mile posts or yard sticks against which you can measure this or that.

And, more importantly, whatever measurements you come up with STICK TO THEM!

Resist the temptations to move the goal posts to suit your numbers, or to make your figures look better than they actually are by "adjusting" them.

This kind of jiggery pokery can and does get companies into a world of pain with share holders, stake holders, and the SEC.

Besides which, it's also bad form, old chap. A no, no.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Agreed with the output measures from above responses, though I have one more thing to add: you probably also want to set up 'intermediate' metrics such as perceived quality, consumer awareness of and satisfaction with the service in order to diagnose where the output measures come from