"d" is not usually a known quantity beforehand and therein lies the problem OP's approach. The "average user" is also not necessarily the most important one to be designing for.
I've seen this kind of analysis "(b*d) / c" lead to a lot of useless SEO tweaks. Ie, imagine you've got some section of your site that is driving a lot of organic SEO traffic. If you are able to increase conversion on that part of the site by a small percent, it would have a huge impact on the business and users would experience more meaningful parts of your product.
Of course, it is very difficult to increase conversion on those parts of your site and most of those initiatives fail.
Better to spend more time focusing on making the experience stellar for a smaller, but strategically important section of users.
> Better to spend more time focusing on making the experience stellar for a smaller, but strategically important section of users.
OP agrees for the 'early days' of your product:
> There is a bit more to say about the breadth and depth of your product. In a company’s earliest days, it is important to place more priority on d in order to ensure that you have product/market fit. It is useless to try to grow or scale before finding 100 users who really love your product. Only then should you refocus on b and grow your user base...
But at some point, you do need to grow your userbase, right?
I've seen this kind of analysis "(b*d) / c" lead to a lot of useless SEO tweaks. Ie, imagine you've got some section of your site that is driving a lot of organic SEO traffic. If you are able to increase conversion on that part of the site by a small percent, it would have a huge impact on the business and users would experience more meaningful parts of your product.
Of course, it is very difficult to increase conversion on those parts of your site and most of those initiatives fail.
Better to spend more time focusing on making the experience stellar for a smaller, but strategically important section of users.