Shopify relies on metrics to inform decisions, but people ultimately decide. The company values unquantifiable things like passion, quality, and brand pride alongside the numbers.
We believe that having metrics make the decisions for us is an obligation of our responsibility to be the leaders of the space. We in fact have all the metrics. We are very sophisticated with our data warehouses and dashboards and so on. We've honed it to a point. But we are using them to support the decision makers, not to make the decisions for us. We think about it as a cockpit for a pilot. And the decisions are still made by pilots and we think this leads to better results. So what actually happens is Shopify is comfortable with the unquantifiable things such as tastes, quality, passion, love, hate. It's like the strong emotions that people have. The sort of deep satisfaction that a crafts person feels when they've done a job well is actually better proxy if you allow it to be. And it's of course really important to figure out what your conversion rates are. But are you representing your brand is an unquantifiable question. Are you proud of the thing that you have built? Do you feel it's your own? I think there needs to be more acceptance in businesses of unquantifiable things. One of the most powerful thing, the most powerful unquantifiable things in the world of business are fun and delight.
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