Introducing Product KPIs

The gap between "shipping features" and "proving impact" is where most product teams lose their footing. Features get built, launches get celebrated, and then comes the scramble, digging through dashboards, stitching together data points, and hoping something sticks when leadership asks the inevitable question: how do we know this worked?

The problem isn't a lack of data. It's a lack of shared language around what success looks like before the first pixel is placed.

The KPI Problem

Most product teams treat Key Performance Indicators as an afterthought, something that gets defined in a spreadsheet after the design is already locked, handed off, and halfway through development. By then, the opportunity to design for measurable outcomes has already passed.

Even teams that prioritize metrics early face a different challenge: choosing the right ones. With hundreds of potential KPIs across acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and engagement, it's easy to either track everything (and learn nothing) or default to vanity metrics that look impressive in a slide deck but don't actually move the business forward. Recent B2B SaaS growth benchmark research puts the scale of the problem in perspective: only about a third of B2B SaaS companies formally track activation rate, despite it being one of the strongest predictors of whether a free user ever converts to a paying customer.

We kept seeing this pattern across projects and industries, talented teams building great products but struggling to connect their design decisions to measurable outcomes. No shared framework. No clear benchmarks. No single source of truth that lives where the work actually happens.

So we built one.

Introducing Product KPIs

Product KPIs is a Figma plugin that integrates a library of over 100 industry-tested Key Performance Indicators directly into your design workflow. Each KPI comes with a clear definition, goal context, and common benchmarks for measurement, bringing greater clarity and accountability into the product design process from the very beginning.

But this isn't just a static reference list. The plugin is designed to meet teams where they are and help them make better decisions faster.

How It Works

Intelligent Recommendations

Rather than asking teams to sift through a wall of metrics, Product KPIs includes a step-by-step wizard that collects context about your product, goals, requirements, and constraints. An AI-powered algorithm then processes your answers and surfaces the most relevant, high-impact KPIs for your specific situation.

Think of it as a guided conversation that replaces the midnight Google search for "best KPIs for SaaS" with something far more targeted and actionable.

Searchable Database

For teams that prefer to browse, the plugin provides a comprehensive, frequently updated database of KPIs organized with tag-based filtering. Whether you're looking for engagement metrics for a consumer app or operational KPIs for an enterprise platform, you can find exactly what you need in seconds.

In-Context Tracking

With one click, the plugin exports a tracking widget directly into your Figma file. Each widget includes the KPI's definition, goals, benchmarks, and links to additional resources, along with input fields for ownership assignment and notes. This keeps the conversation about measurement anchored in the same space where design decisions are being made, rather than scattered across separate tools and documents.

Export Anywhere

Not everything lives in Figma, and we built for that reality. Product KPIs supports export to a variety of common file formats, making it easy to share your selected KPIs with stakeholders, plug them into project management tools, or integrate them into the rest of your product stack.

Who It's For

Product KPIs is built for the teams sitting at the intersection of design and outcomes: product designers who want their mockups to carry a measurement plan, not just a visual spec, and product managers who need a shared vocabulary with design instead of translating requirements back and forth between tools. Founders and small teams who don't have a dedicated analytics function yet use it to make defensible bets without guessing. Agencies and consultancies working across multiple clients use it as a fast way to establish a measurement baseline without starting from a blank page on every engagement.

From Wizard to Widget

Here's what using the plugin actually looks like in practice. A designer opens a new Figma file for a subscription onboarding flow and launches Product KPIs. The wizard asks a handful of questions, product type, business model, primary goal for this specific flow, current stage of the product. Based on those answers, it surfaces a shortlist: activation rate, time-to-first-value, and onboarding completion rate, each with its definition, typical benchmark range, and a short note on why it's relevant to an onboarding flow specifically.

The designer selects two of the three, and with one click, a tracking widget appears directly on the canvas next to the flow it measures. The widget carries the KPI definition, benchmark, an owner field, and a notes section, so when a stakeholder opens the file three weeks later, the measurement plan is sitting right where the design decisions were made, not buried in a separate doc nobody remembers to update.

What the Data Says

The benchmarks back up why this matters. Current PLG growth data shows the average product activation rate sitting around 37.5%, with best-in-class teams pushing past 70%, and average time-to-value around 36 hours. Median net revenue retention across B2B SaaS hovers near 88–90%, while top performers exceed 120%. The gap between "average" and "best-in-class" on these numbers isn't about having smarter engineers, it's about teams that know exactly which KPI they're designing toward at every stage of the product, and design deliberately to move it.

That's the gap Product KPIs is built to close, not by generating new numbers, but by making sure the right numbers are part of the conversation before the roadmap is finalized. If you want a deeper look at how to separate a genuinely useful KPI from a vanity metric, we wrote about that distinction in Why Choosing the Right KPIs Makes All the Difference in Product Success.

Why We Built This

At Arsonist AI, we believe the gap between design and measurable impact shouldn't exist. Designers and product managers deserve tools that make defining success a first-class part of the creative process, not a reporting exercise that happens after the fact.

We've seen firsthand how the right KPIs, chosen at the right time, can transform team alignment. When everyone is working toward the same clearly defined outcomes, decisions get sharper, debates get more productive, and the work itself becomes more intentional. This is the same philosophy behind our broader product design work, measurable outcomes belong in the room from day one, not bolted on after launch.

Product KPIs is our attempt to make that alignment effortless, embedded directly in the tool where the work is already happening.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes Product KPIs different from a spreadsheet of metrics?

A spreadsheet is static and lives outside your workflow, which means it's rarely consulted once the initial planning meeting ends. Product KPIs lives inside Figma, next to the actual design decisions it's meant to inform, with benchmarks and definitions built in so nobody has to go hunting for context.

Does it work with little data?

Yes. The wizard is built to recommend appropriate leading indicators, like activation and time-to-value, for early-stage products, rather than assuming you already have the volume of data needed for lagging indicators like retention or net revenue retention.

Does it work outside Figma?

Every KPI you select can be exported to common file formats, so you can bring your chosen metrics into project management tools, decks, or documentation outside of Figma.

Is Product KPIs free to try?

Product KPIs is available now on the Figma Community, install it directly from Figma to see current pricing and plan details.

How does it pick KPIs?

The wizard weighs your answers about product type, business model, and current goal against the same criteria a strong measurement plan should meet: whether a metric is genuinely tied to a business outcome, whether your team's decisions can actually move it, and whether it's appropriate for your product's current stage. Early-stage products get leading indicators like activation surfaced first; more mature products see retention and revenue-oriented KPIs surface higher in the recommendations.

Getting Your Team on Board

A measurement plan only works if it's actually shared, and the most common reason KPI initiatives stall isn't a lack of good metrics, it's that the metrics live in one person's head or one person's file. Bringing the plugin into a kickoff meeting rather than a solo planning session changes that dynamic immediately: when engineering and product are in the room while the KPIs get selected, there's no separate "translation" step later where design has to convince the rest of the team a metric matters. The widget being visible directly on the design file also means a stakeholder reviewing the work doesn't have to ask what success looks like, it's already annotated next to the flow it measures.

Get Started

Product KPIs is available now on the Figma Community. Install it, run the wizard, and start designing with measurable intent.

We'd love to hear how your team approaches KPI selection and what you think of the plugin. Reach out to us at info@arsonistai.com.