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Guide Notes & Explanation
Accompanying breakdown for this slide deck
- Stop Guessing. Start Measuring with SQL.
Why SQL KPIs?
- Gain real-time insights without waiting for dashboards
- Customize metrics to fit your exact business questions
- Understand the data behind the numbers completely
- Reduce dependency on other teams or tools
- Create a single source of truth for performance
The KPI Foundation
- Always start with a clear business question
- Identify the correct data tables and columns
- Choose the right aggregation (COUNT, SUM, AVG)
- Define a precise time frame for your metric
- Establish a target or benchmark for comparison
Essential COUNT Metrics
- Track total new user signups per day
- Monitor daily active users (DAU) or weekly active users (WAU)
- Count number of completed transactions
- Measure support ticket volume by priority
- Calculate new content or product uploads
Powerful SUM & AVG Metrics
- Sum total sales revenue by week or month
- Calculate average revenue per user (ARPU)
- Measure total session duration for engagement
- Compute average order value (AOV)
- Track total ad spend against campaigns
Ratio & Rate KPIs
- Calculate conversion rates (e.g., signup to purchase)
- Monitor daily churn rate or customer retention rate
- Compute click-through rate (CTR) for campaigns
- Track inventory sell-through rate
- Measure support ticket resolution rate
Time-Based Analysis
- Use DATE_TRUNC to group by week or month
- Compare week-over-week (WoW) growth
- Analyze month-over-month (MoM) trends
- Calculate year-over-year (YoY) comparisons
- Track metrics over rolling time windows
Pro Tips
- Use CTEs or temp tables to break down complex logic
- Always filter out test data and NULL values
- Comment your code for clarity and future you
- Validate results with a spot-check in the raw data
- Use window functions for running totals or rankings
Your Next Steps
- Start with one simple metric you care about
- Write a basic query to calculate it for today
- Expand it to show a trend over time
- Share your SQL-based KPI with your team
- Iterate and build more complex metrics