Pirate Metrics Introduction

Pirate Metrics helps you perform quantitative and comparative analysis of your business by tracking 5 key metrics.

Acquisition - users come to the site; you have their attention
Activation - user performs some key activity that indicates a good first visit
Retention - user continues to do that key activity indicating they like your product
Referral - user gets other users to join
Revenue - user pays you

SaaS Example

The specific metrics for a SaaS business like DocRaptor might be

Acquisition - when a user signs up for the service
Activation - user successfully makes a document
Retention - user continues to make documents. As long as they're successfully making documents they will continue to use DocRaptor
Referral - send other users to DocRaptor, possibly with a coupon code
Revenue - yay! money!

Blog Example

The specific metrics for a blog might be

Acquisition - users come to the site and stay for at least 2 minutes
Activation - user signs up for RSS/newsletter
Retention - user reads at least one post a week or opens the newsletter
Referral - user promotes your blogs contests and drives traffic
Revenue - user buys your ebook

Pirate Metrics API

This is the documentation for Version 1 of the Pirate Metrics API. If you're using Ruby, please try out the Pirate Metrics Agent. It makes installation even easier.

Acquisition

URL: https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/acquisitions

Required
:email - used to track your customer through the system

Optional

:level - plan level or value
:occurred_at - if you're backfilling data, tell us when it happened
:referrer - Some information about how the user arrived at your site, for example, the HTTP_REFERER

Example
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d'{"api_key":"piratelol1", "data":[{"email":"email@example.com"}]}' https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/acquisitions

Activation

Can't activate a customer you haven't acquired.

URL: https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/activations

Required
:email - identifies which customer has activated

Optional
:occurred_at - if you're backfilling data, tell us when it happened

Example
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d'{"api_key":"piratelol1", "data":[{"email":"email@example.com"}]}' https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/activations

Retention

URL: https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/retentions

Required
:email - identifies which customer has performed the key activity

Optional
:occurred_at - if you're backfilling data, tell us when it happened

Example
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d'{"api_key":"piratelol1", "data":[{"email":"email@example.com"}]}' https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/retentions

Referral

URL: https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/referrals

Required
:customer_email - identifies which customer has performed the referral
:referree_email - identifies which customer you gained from the referral

Optional :occurred_at - if you're backfilling data, tell us when it happened

Example
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d'{"api_key":"piratelol1", "data":[{"customer_email":"email@example.com", "referree_email":"other@example.com"}]}' https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/referrals

Revenue

URL: https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/revenue

Required
:email - identifies which customer has performed the key activity
:amount_in_cents - amount the customer paid you; we ignore zero values

Optional
:occurred_at - if you're backfilling data, tell us when it happened

Example
curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d'{"api_key":"piratelol1", "data":[{"email":"email@example.com", "amount_in_cents":"100", "occurred_at":"2012-08-01 2:32 EST"}]}' https://piratemetrics.com/api/v1/revenues