Steering with data: deciding without guessing

Measure what matters, not everything

An entrepreneur who decides on gut feeling moves forward blindfolded. Steering means tracking a small number of indicators that truly reflect the health of the business, and using them to decide. The opposite trap exists too: drowning in a hundred metrics and acting on none. Good steering is lean and action-oriented.

This chapter covers analytics tools, dashboards, and tracking key indicators.

Web analytics

Google Analytics 4 (free) remains the reference for analyzing traffic, sources, and conversions, despite a dense interface.
Plausible, Umami, and Fathom Analytics are lightweight, privacy-friendly alternatives (often with no cookie banner), at the cost of a little less depth. Plausible and Umami are open source.
Microsoft Clarity (free) complements the numbers with behavior: session recordings and heatmaps to see where visitors click and drop off.

The pairing "a numbers tool (Plausible/GA4) + a behavior tool (Clarity)" is enough to understand both how many and why.

Product and revenue indicators

Beyond traffic, steer the economic machinery:

Stripe natively provides a revenue dashboard: MRR, churn, average value, new customers.
For a SaaS, tools like ChartMogul or Baremetrics refine subscription analysis (cohorts, retention, forecasting).
The indicators to watch first: recurring revenue (MRR/ARR), churn rate, customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV), and their ratio.

A single figure often sums up the health of a subscription business: the LTV/CAC ratio. Below 3, the model spends too much to acquire; above that, there's room to invest.

Centralizing in a dashboard

Rather than juggling ten interfaces, gather your indicators in one place.

Google Looker Studio (free) connects GA4, Search Console, Google Sheets, and many other sources to create visual dashboards.
Notion with linked databases can serve as a lightweight dashboard, updated manually or via automation.
Databox and Geckoboard aggregate multiple sources into ready-made dashboards.
For the more technical, a Google Sheet fed automatically (via Zapier/Make) remains the most flexible and free steering tool.

Defining your key indicators (KPIs)

The danger isn't a lack of data, but its excess. For each objective, choose one main indicator:

Validation phase → sign-up rate on the landing page.
Acquisition phase → qualified traffic and cost per lead.
Monetization phase → conversion rate and MRR.
Retention phase → churn rate and LTV.

Beware of vanity metrics: the number of followers or page views flatters the ego but doesn't pay the bills. Favor actionable metrics, tied to a decision: if the indicator moves, you know what to change.

Goodhart's law: a safeguard

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." If you blindly optimize a figure, you'll end up maximizing it at the expense of the reality it was meant to represent. For example: pushing the number of sign-ups by piling on unqualified registrations actually degrades your business. Always keep in mind what the figure is supposed to reflect.

The steering rhythm

Steering only has value if it's regular and light:

Weekly: a quick glance at 3-5 key indicators (traffic, leads, sales, churn).
Monthly: a more considered review, compared to the previous month, to decide on priorities.
Quarterly: stepping back to look at the trajectory, auditing the stack and subscriptions, and adjusting the strategy.

Block these reviews in your calendar as non-negotiable appointments. What isn't measured regularly isn't steered.

A starter steering stack

For an entrepreneur who wants to steer without drowning:

Plausible or GA4 for traffic and conversions.
Microsoft Clarity for behavior.
Stripe Dashboard for revenue.
Looker Studio or a Google Sheet to centralize 3-5 KPIs in a single view.

Key takeaways

Steering means deciding with facts rather than impressions, by tracking few indicators but the right ones. Combine a numbers tool (Plausible/GA4), a behavior tool (Clarity), and a centralized dashboard (Looker Studio), choose one KPI per objective, avoid vanity metrics, and establish a review rhythm. You've now covered the seven territories: it's time to assemble your own stack with a clear method.