AARRR
AARRR
Also known as: pirate metrics
Acquisition, activation, retention, revenue and referral: five stages for reading how a product grows.
Users do not become customers in one step. They hear about you, try it, come back, pay, and tell someone. AARRR attaches a metric to each of those five stages.
Its value is showing where the flow is blocked. If visits rise but returns do not, the fix is activation and retention, not more ads.
Rather than watching all five, pick the narrowest stage now and move that one number.
- ActivationThe share of new users who reach the moment the product shows its value.
- RetentionIn most products this is the first stage to break.