There are a lot of metrics out there, from bounce rates to qualified leads to likes, shares, and follows. People sometimes overvalue the metrics that are very visible, Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media calls this “heuristic availability.”

What he means by this is that the things we can see are what we think are important, but really, the harder to find metrics are the ones that tend to be more important and have a greater impact on our businesses.

These harder to find metrics could be conversion rates from specific traffic sources, rates on how engaging a certain URL is, or a percentage of mobile visitors that took certain actions on your website.

The more visible the metric, the less important it probably is. Andy calls this “Julian’s Law.”