Analytics To Scale Your Digital Product – Edition #2

Happy Monday!
Good morning product leaders! Hope you all had a great 2 weeks.

For myself, I’ve had interesting discussions in the past days that lead me to think more about product dynamics. This culminated in a post named just that “Product forces, dynamics and outcomes”.

I try to describe the mechanism of such dynamics and how to leverage analytics to better manage and stimulate product dynamics. If you do take the time to read it (thank you!), I would definitely like to get your views on this.

But enough of me, here is what else that caught my attention in those last 2 weeks.

When To Hire A Product Manager

I’m assuming most of you play a role as a product leader, and that means taking ownership for the growth and development of a product. But when should part of your role be delegated to a product manager?

MindTheProduct recently released a podcast called The Product Experience where, in their own words…

“Each episode features co-hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver chatting with the best speakers from ProductTanks and Mind the Product conferences around the world, sharing practical information on how to improve your practice.”

The latest episode is with Ken Norton, who takes on a very lucid take on when to hire product manager, how to hire one, what’s to be expected of that person, etc. Noticeable in that interview is that, he doesn’t preach for the choir. Not that he doesn’t believe in the value of PMs, but that you shouldn’t pull in tons of PMs and expect that will make your product grow. You’re still the product leader in the end.

And that one did in part spark my thinking on that blog post on product dynamics I talked about above. As I explain in my post…

“But the trouble now is that, well, you’re scaling. It’s not enough for you to instinctively know what’s working. If your product is scaling, your team probably is also. And that means that growing a product is no more the work of one person. Growth strategy is now a group function. What was implicitly known now needs to be explicitly described.”

So a great podcast to listen to and I’m sure I’ll be covering more of their stuff here in the future.

The Dynamics of Marketplaces

Now here’s a blog post which reaaaaally caught my interest this week. This one’s from Dave Lu. In his Medium blog post “Not All Marketplaces are Created Equal: Tales of a Marketplace Founder”, he goes into the depths of what constitutes the elements of a modern marketplace’s dynamics.

Now, this is long read, but if your product is a marketplace, you need to know about its internal dynamics, because marketplaces are complex beasts. Building such a product requires to build a network of suppliers, a network of demand, and creating a platform to make connections between both parties. Mind blown!

Anyways, the author brings us on a lengthy ride of what that entails. For example, an important dynamic is to increase desirability and value on both sides (supply and demand) in an equilibrium that makes it enticing for both sides to engage more, based on the health of the other side’s engagement. But if you can really manage that product’s dynamic, then the return is enormous.

Make coffee. Sit down. Ready through. Thank me later.

What Captures Your User’s Interest?

I stumbled on this beautiful analysis about how news stories are staying in the public eye. That made me think of how such analysis could be interesting in regards to analyzing user engagement within a product.

The initial question being asked was: Which stories stay longest in the public view, and which ones fade away?

“One way to gauge public attention is by measuring a story’s “search interest” over time”

That also applies to your own product. What is capturing your user’s interests?

A well-planned data architecture can easily lets you see what’s actually driving interest in your product. And how about knowing what actions are taken by those users afterwards? 

See You In 2 Weeks

Well, that’s it for now. As you’ve seen, we’re iterating over newsletter designs and formats. Any thoughts, suggestions?

And again, if you know of anyone that might be interested in such a newsletter, please share the good work 🙂

On that, 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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