User Journeys - Pirate Metrics and Aha Moments
2.3 User Journeys: Pirate Metrics and Aha Moments
In the last chapter, we covered segmentation and why it’s central to nearly every data analytics task. One common and powerful way to segment users is based on where they are in their customer (or user) journey.
But the user journey isn’t just a sub-topic of segmentation — it’s an important concept in its own right. It’s used by stakeholders across the company, from marketing and sales to product, customer support, and beyond.
In this chapter, you’ll learn:
- The 6 classic user journey stages
- What the “aha!” moment is and why it matters
- How to connect real events to each journey stage
- How to segment users by behavior and stage
- How to define and measure user activation
Introduction: What’s a User Journey and Why Should Analysts Care About It?
The user journey is the complete experience a person has with the company’s product or brand — from the moment they hear about it to the point they stop using it (or refer others).
A user journey maps the key stages a user goes through — from discovering your product to becoming an advocate for it.
As a data analyst, your job is to help the business understand what’s working — and what’s not. The user journey gives you a framework to:
- Map behavior to business goals
- Spot bottlenecks in product experience
- Understand how users move through key stages
- Measure impact of changes over time
Whether you’re working in product, marketing, or growth, this framework helps you bring clarity, tells you where to look and what to measure.
This all sounds simple and straightforward. As all things, this can get quite complicated in the real world — but at this point, let’s focus on the basics.
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The 6 Stages of the User Journey
Understanding user behavior starts with knowing where users are. Most digital products follow this core flow:
- Awareness — Users hear about your product
- Acquisition — Users arrive on your site or app and sign up
- Activation — Users experience value for the first time
- Retention — Users come back again and again
- Revenue — Users convert to paying or generate revenue
- Referral — Users share your product with others
This journey is your backbone. Every event, action, and funnel can usually be tied to one of these stages.
A simple way to remember the different stages is through a framework often called Pirate Metrics — named for the sound it makes: AAARRR.
I won’t cover every step of the user journey here in detail, but I will focus on one very important step to show you a bit of how complicated (and super interesting) it can get to measure user journeys.
That key step is often called “activation.”
Activation & the “Aha!” Moment
Activation is when a user goes from "just trying" to "getting it."
It’s the moment they experience real value — and it’s a strong signal they might stick around.
Often in analytics assignments, we’ll use this “active user” segment to filter noise and focus on users who actually get what we can do for them.
Examples of activation moments:
| Company | Product Type | Activation Moment (Aha!) Example |
|---|---|---|
| Monday.com | Project Management (B2B) | When a user creates a board, invites teammates, and moves a task |
| Dropbox | Cloud Storage | When a user uploads their first file |
| Airbnb | Marketplace | When a user books their first stay or saves a listing |
| Spotify | Consumer App | When a user plays a song or follows an artist |
| Notion | Productivity Tool | When a user creates their first page or invites a teammate |
Defining activation is a big challenge. It’s rarely a straightforward task.
It’s a process of its own — combining:
- Understanding the product
- Knowing the value it brings to users
- Knowing what customers need and how they interact with the product
It involves:
- Speaking to customers
- Talking to multiple stakeholders
- Analyzing the data to understand user behavior
And most importantly — figuring out which behaviors (activation signals) actually mean something significant, and which are just noise that should be filtered out.
Every product has a different activation event. Your job is to:
- Work with product teams to define what value means
- Use data to find the first moment users reach that value
- Understand how that moment relates to other company metrics
If users don’t activate, nothing else matters.
They won’t retain, monetize, or refer.
Mapping Events to Journey Stages
Once you know the journey stages, you can start assigning user actions to them.
This helps you structure analysis, track conversion, and identify leaks.
| Stage | Example Events |
|---|---|
| Awareness | Page views, ad clicks |
| Acquisition | Sign-up, install, registration |
| Activation | First key action (e.g., upload, message) |
| Monetization | Payment completed, subscription started |
| Retention | Repeat logins, active days per week |
| Referral | Invite sent, review posted, share clicked |
When raw event logs are mapped to this structure, your data becomes easier to interpret — and far more actionable.
Behavioral Segmentation by Journey Stage
Just like you can segment users by traits or spend, you can also segment them by where they are in the journey — and what they’ve done.
This is a powerful technique for several reasons:
a. It filters out noise
Instead of analyzing everyone who signed up (many of whom never engage), you focus on users who are actually showing meaningful intent — the ones worth learning from.
b. It gives you a larger, more useful sample than just paying users
Most people don’t end up paying for most products. But many do use them. Active users form a much bigger, more analyzable group.
c. It improves prioritization
Active users are more predictive of future revenue, retention, and churn. Analyzing their behavior helps teams focus on the features, campaigns, or segments that actually drive impact.
Measuring User Activation
To analyze activation in a meaningful way, you need to break it down into the right questions:
a. Define the activation event
What specific user action signals they’ve received real value — not just that they used the product, but that something clicked?
→ Example: “Created a board and invited a teammate” (Monday), not just “logged in.”
b. Set a timeframe
How long do users have to activate?
→ Is it within the first session, first 24 hours, or within 7 days of acquisition? Time matters — late activation often means lost users.
c. Measure the activation rate
What percentage of acquired users reach that activation point?
→ Track it over time and break it down by segment, channel, or device to identify patterns.
d. Link activation to retention
Do users who activate stick around longer?
→ Activation is often a leading indicator of retention and revenue — a strong activation moment tends to improve everything downstream.
e. Analyze pre-activation behavior
What do successful users do before they activate?
→ Understanding these early behaviors can help you design better onboarding flows and increase the odds of activation.
Summary: What You Learned
- The user journey helps you understand where users are and what they’re doing
- Activation is the critical turning point where users experience value
- Every product has a different "aha" moment — analysts help define and measure it
- Mapping events to journey stages brings structure to messy event data
- Segmenting users by journey stage reveals who’s stuck, thriving, or ready to convert
Key Terms Recap
- User Journey: The path users take from discovery to loyalty
- Pirate Metrics: A framework of six user journey stages — Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Monetization, and Referral
- Activation: When users experience product value for the first time
- Aha Moment: The specific action that signals product fit
- Journey Mapping: Tying user events to different lifecycle stages
- Behavioral Segmentation: Grouping users based on what they’ve done
What’s Next?
In the next chapter — 2.4 Acquisition: Where Users Come From (and What It Means) — we’ll shift focus to the very start of the user journey.
You’ll learn how users discover your product, how to measure the cost of acquiring them, and why not all channels bring the same kind of users.
We’ll cover key concepts like CAC, attribution models, and the LTV vs. CAC ratio, and show how segmentation by acquisition source can reveal which users actually stick around and pay.
You’ve seen what happens after users get value — now let’s go back to the beginning and figure out how they got here in the first place.