Analytics To Scale Your Digital Product – Edition #3

Happy Monday!

Goooood morning product managers/owners/leaders/aficionados (hard to keep track). Hope you all had a great weekend. Not to brag, but I’m actually in a cottage lost somewhere in Québec by the time you read this. Yes, it’s March break for my kids and that means it’s March break for me too. Take that long, cold and snowy Winter!

Anywho, before leaving, I still managed to get my thoughts together and write a blog post on how to leverage data to accelerate your product’s development. I look at the implementation of an analytical infrastructure that allows you to measure, learn and shape your product.

If that’s not exciting enough, know that there are visual goodies in there, as you’ll see some sketches for a future animated infographic that my friend Pascal is working on right now.

But enough of me and my week-long time off (had I mentioned that yet?). And on with what caught my attention this week.

Measuring Network Effects

https://a16z.com/2018/12/13/16-metrics-network-effects/

Last time around, we talked a lot about product dynamics. And I’ve continued going down that rabbit hole.

There are 5 main categories to measure network effects: acquisition, competitors, engagement, marketplace, and economics-related metrics.

As I had written in my blog post on Product forces, dynamics and outcomes, not all metrics that measures outcomes are equal. As the author here says:

“Every single network effect business is different depending on the particular product, audience, and environment, so there’s no one-size-fits-all list of measures.”

You do have to know your product’s dynamics and what are the main drivers of growth. Only then can you focus on one or two key metrics. And the ones listed in this article are a great start to get your analytical juices flowing.

How to Measure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsBjAuexPq4&feature=youtu.be&t=1452

But, back to basics… what should you measure when starting out?

This talk is from the CEO of Quora… at Stanford… just worth pointing that out. You would think that this sort of talk would go into deep technical details about product analytics. But no. A really accessible, well thought and well delivered talk on the basics of using data to grow your product.

So we’ve talked about product forces, dynamics and outcomes, and we’ve talked about network effects and all that good stuff. But at the root of all this, there are some core things that needs to be measured.

From D’Angelo’s point of view, these are the main things to measure:

  • User Value – revenue, transactions
  • User Growth
  • Retention
  • Iteration Speed

Iteration speed is interesting, cause this is the one that will make your business adapt its product quickly to what users want. It’s about how fast you’re learning from your metrics to change your product and achieve product-market fit. It’s in fact a key concept of that latest post I wrote on shaping products.

Growing Businesses

A must read for anyone that cares about growing businesses that will generate value for society and not just their investors.

“The fundamental problem with Silicon Valley’s favorite growth strategy”  is written by Tim O’Reilly and if you know a little of tech scene, this man has been one of the key people who defined the digital economy and the technological infrastructure that supports it.

Have you read “What’s The Future And Why It’s Up To Us”? That’s a must read if you’re interested in knowing where the tech scene is heading for. And this article has a parallel to this book, as it talks of where digital businesses should be heading to.

Here’s a quote I liked:

« The losses from the blitzscaling mentality are felt not just by entrepreneurs but by society more broadly. When the traditional venture-capital wisdom is to shutter companies that aren’t achieving hypergrowth businesses that would once have made meaningful contributions to our economy are not funded, or are starved of further investment once it is clear that they no longer have a hope of becoming a home run. »

Finish this newsletter and go read it afterwards. Worth every penny (time is money, so…).

See You In 2 Weeks

If that newsletter didn’t bring you joy, then just know that by now, I’m probably on the ski slopes having a blast. There you go. You’re welcome 🙂

But all good things must come to an end. And that’s why my friends, I will see you all again in 2 weeks. Until then, happy data-driven product development!

How can you leverage data to strategically grow your digital product? This Analytics To Scale Digital Product newsletter is about exploring it from different angles – product management, data engineering, data science and data-driven strategy.

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