Product metrics reveal how players experience an iGaming platform in practice. They show how players move through onboarding, interact with features, and return over time. Unlike financial or marketing KPIs, product metrics focus on behavior inside the platform and help teams understand where the experience supports engagement and where it creates friction.

In 2026, these signals play a central role in product decision-making. They guide iteration, inform prioritization, and help platforms improve player experience while operating within regulated environments.

Onboarding Metrics: How Players Enter the Product

Onboarding metrics help product teams understand how smoothly players move from initial interest to their first meaningful interaction with the platform. These signals highlight whether registration, verification, and early payment flows support momentum or introduce hesitation.

Started Registration → Completed Registration Conversion (Reg CR)

This metric tracks the percentage of users who complete registration after initiating the sign-up flow. A high completion rate signals a streamlined form, logical field sequence, and smooth verification process. A decline typically points to usability gaps, technical interruptions, or compliance steps that are not clearly communicated.

Registration → First Deposit Conversion (Reg2Dep)

This metric measures how effectively the product turns registered users into active players. A strong conversion rate usually reflects clear onboarding steps, intuitive navigation, and well-integrated payment options. When the number drops, it often points to friction between expectations set during acquisition and the actual in-product experience.

First Time Deposit (FTD)

First Time Deposit (FTD) measures the number of new players who complete their first deposit. In acquisition-focused environments, FTD is the primary indicator of traffic quality and onboarding effectiveness.

While earlier metrics track funnel movement, FTD reflects the final conversion into a paying player. A decline may signal friction in registration, verification, payment flows, or misalignment between acquisition messaging and the product experience.

KYC Completion Rate (KYC CR)

KYC completion shows how verification fits into the player journey. From a product perspective, it’s less about compliance success and more about flow design. High completion rates suggest that identity checks are timed and presented in a way that feels natural rather than disruptive.

Time to First Deposit (Time to FTD)

This metric captures how long it takes a new user to complete their first core action. Shorter times typically indicate clarity and confidence within the onboarding flow, while longer delays can signal uncertainty, unclear prompts, or unnecessary steps that slow players down.

Together, these metrics provide early insight into how welcoming and understandable the product feels. They help teams spot onboarding issues before they affect retention and long-term engagement.

Cost per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost per Acquisition (CPA) measures how much it costs to acquire one depositing player, usually calculated per FTD.

Although CPA is a marketing metric, it is directly influenced by onboarding performance. Lower conversion rates increase acquisition costs, making product flow efficiency a commercial priority.

Further Funnel Metrics: Where Momentum Slows or Breaks

Once players move past onboarding, funnel metrics help product teams see how smoothly the experience carries them forward. These metrics focus on movement, not outcomes, showing where players hesitate, pause, or exit altogether.

Drop-off Rates at Key Funnel Stages

Drop-off rates track where players leave the product journey, whether during registration, verification, deposit, or early gameplay. From a product perspective, these points often reveal UX friction rather than a lack of interest. Small design issues, such as unclear instructions, extra steps, or poorly timed prompts, can have an outsized impact here.

Analyzing drop-offs by device, region, or player segment helps teams pinpoint whether friction is systemic or context-specific. This makes funnel metrics especially useful for prioritizing product improvements that remove blockers instead of adding new features.

Funnel data also provides an early warning system. When drop-off patterns shift suddenly, it often signals changes in player expectations, platform performance issues, or unintended side effects from recent updates.

Engagement Metrics: How Players Use the Platform

Engagement metrics show what happens after players become active. They help product teams understand whether the platform holds attention, encourages exploration, and supports repeat interaction beyond the first sessions.

Average Session Duration

Session duration reflects how immersive and intuitive the experience feels during active play. Longer sessions often indicate that navigation is clear and features connect naturally, while consistently short sessions can signal usability issues, performance problems, or content that fails to sustain interest.

Tracked over time, this metric also helps teams evaluate the impact of product updates. Sudden changes in session length often reveal whether a release improved flow or introduced new friction.

Feature Adoption Rates

Adoption rates measure how many players actively use new or existing features. Low adoption doesn’t always mean lack of interest; it often points to discoverability issues, unclear value, or poor placement within the user journey.

For product teams, adoption data helps distinguish between features that need refinement and those that may not align with actual player needs.

Together, engagement metrics provide a practical view of how the platform is experienced day to day. They move analysis beyond surface activity and into how players spend their time inside the product.

Retention Metrics: Who Comes Back and Who Leaves

Retention metrics connect short-term engagement with long-term product performance. They show whether the platform delivers enough ongoing value for players to return beyond their initial sessions.

Retention Rate (Day-X / Monthly Active Players)

Retention rates measure how many players return after a defined period and how consistently the platform holds attention over time. Evaluated by cohort, these metrics help product teams compare onboarding versions, feature changes, or regional differences without relying on assumptions.

From a product standpoint, retention highlights whether the experience supports habit formation rather than one-off activity.

Churn Rate

Churn captures the share of players who stop using the platform within a given period. On its own, it’s a blunt metric, but paired with behavioral data, it becomes far more informative. Understanding what players did before leaving (which features they used, where they stalled, or how their session patterns changed) helps teams identify product gaps that contribute to disengagement.

Retention and churn together provide a realistic view of product health. They indicate whether improvements made earlier in the funnel translate into sustained usage over time.

Why These Metrics Matter Together

Each of these metrics offers a narrow view on its own. Taken together, they describe how players experience the product from first interaction to long-term use.

“Onboarding metrics show whether the platform creates early momentum. Funnel metrics reveal where that momentum weakens. Engagement metrics explain how players spend their time once active, and retention metrics confirm whether the experience delivers lasting value. When tracked in isolation, these signals can be misleading; when viewed as a connected system, they highlight clear cause-and-effect patterns.”
—Dmytro Matiiuk, Head of Delivery, Atlaslive

For product teams, this combined view supports better decisions. It helps prioritize improvements, evaluate the impact of changes, and avoid reacting to surface-level fluctuations. In 2026, the most effective platforms use product metrics not as performance scores, but as inputs for continuous, controlled iteration.

At Atlaslive, this logic is embedded into our analytics environment. Our Power BI reports provide operators with direct visibility into registration-to-deposit conversion, retention, and churn metrics, alongside detailed performance data on game popularity, play frequency, and GGR contribution.

This enables operators to connect acquisition efficiency with content performance and long-term player value, not as isolated indicators, but as a single, measurable system that supports informed product and commercial decisions.

Additional Product Metrics to Keep an Eye on

• Lifetime Value (LTV) shows whether product improvements translate into long-term player value.
• Average Revenue Per User / Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPU / ARPPU) helps evaluate monetization quality across active and paying users.
• Gross and Net Gaming Revenue (GGR / NGR) reflect overall financial performance influenced by product changes.
• Responsible Gaming & Compliance Signals indicate risk levels and define the boundaries within which the product operates.

These metrics act as outcome indicators, helping operators assess how product decisions translate into commercial performance and regulatory stability.

Conclusion

Product metrics offer the clearest view into how an iGaming platform performs in practice. By tracking onboarding efficiency, engagement depth, and retention behavior, operators gain insight into how players actually experience the product and where improvements matter most.

In 2026, these metrics are most effective when treated as decision tools rather than static KPIs. Used together, they help product teams prioritize changes, evaluate impact, and evolve the platform in a controlled and sustainable way within regulated environments.

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This document is provided to you for your information and discussion only. This document was based on public sources of information and was created by the Atlaslive team for marketing usage. It is not a solicitation or an offer to buy or sell any gambling-related product. Nothing in this document constitutes legal or business development advice. This document has been prepared from sources Atlaslive believes to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness and do not accept liability for any loss arising from its use. Atlaslive reserves the right to remedy any errors that may be present in this document.

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