Category posts
Product
Editorial

Discussions of unit economics sometimes get sidetracked by formulas and business jargon. But you shouldn’t need a special course just to get a handle on this critical concept. Unit economics can actually be easy and even intuitive.
(more…)Editorial

Retention (also referred to as “retention rate” or “RR”) is one of any product’s most vital metrics. Good retention means users keep coming back. People use your product again and again because they find sufficient value in it for accomplishing their jobs-to-be-done.
In this article, we will look closely at retention and see why it’s so essential for your product and business.
(more…)Oleg Ya

People switch their way of getting a job done when they find a product that does this better than the existing alternatives. But just creating a more effective solution isn’t enough. Teams have to learn how to articulate and deliver this value to target users.
(more…)Oleg Ya

When plowing ahead with product creation, it’s easy to start talking about a product from the viewpoint of the people who make it. But then we risk overlooking how the product actually creates value and helps users. If this happens, activation takes a turn for the worse.
Here we’ll be demonstrating the value communication framework. This is a way to imagine yourself as the user. With their job-to-be-done in mind, you analyze the key headers, texts, visuals, sales scripts, and other elements to see whether they articulate value as seen by the user.
You will be able to discover where communication issues lurk and then fix them to articulate value in language that resonates with users.
(more…)Oleg Ya

We have discussed in the previous articles why it’s important to reduce friction and strengthen motivation for users throughout the activation flow.
Here we will go into depth with what we call the “tax/benefit framework”. This is a way of conceptualizing changes in motivation over time as the user goes through the activation flow. By performing this kind of analysis, you can better structure activation, motivate new users as you guide them to an “aha moment”, and turn “tax” steps into “benefit” steps.
(more…)Oleg Ya

A product’s added value depends on context: the use case, alternative products known and available to the user, current method for performing the job-to-be-done, and user’s personal preferences and tastes.
By getting additional information about the user, product teams can tailor activation for a better fit. The result is a stronger activation process with improved outcomes.
In this material, we will discuss where you can get additional data about the user and how you can use this for improving the activation flow.
(more…)Oleg Ya

In the previous article, we detailed an algorithm to optimize each step of the activation process by reducing friction and strengthening motivation.
But where does the inspiration for these improvement hypotheses come from? Especially if you don’t have much experience, real-life examples offer a great starting point. That’s why we’ve dedicated this article to categorizing and analyzing some of them.
(more…)Oleg Ya

When you want to optimize your product’s onboarding and activation, one of the best approaches is to systematically reduce friction and strengthen user motivation for every step on the path to value.
Here we will discuss how to apply this two-pronged approach to your own product.
(more…)Oleg Ya

For many product managers, improving activation is synonymous with optimizing the onboarding process. They identify key steps on the value journey of new clients, calculate user dropout rates, create hypotheses for making improvements, and start testing these hypotheses experimentally.
These changes will probably be targeted and small: tweaks to form logic, rewrites of notifications and emails, mobile-friendly design, and so on. Some teams picture activation work as being precisely this—making a large number of localized optimizations at points along the initial portions of the user journey.
Without a doubt, optimizing onboarding on the level of the product, texts, notifications, and other processes is an important part of activation work. But at some point, you need to know when it’s not enough. How do you know when to optimize with a scalpel and when to overhaul the activation process at a more fundamental level?
(more…)Oleg Ya

We previously have discussed how to design activation mechanisms for a particular use case. This approach involves working backwards, starting with product value and culminating with acquisition channels and landing pages.
But what about situations when a product has product/market fit for several different use cases? Users will come to the product with different jobs they want to get done. Depending on the use case, these users will have their own “aha moments”, conditions necessary for reaching that moment, and optimal paths to value.
In this article we present an algorithm for checking how well the current activation mechanisms for your product provide the shortest possible route to value, even when there are diverse use cases in play.
(more…)
Other content series
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- How to measure the added value of a product
- Should a product be 10 times better to achieve product/market fit?
- Product/market fit can be weak or strong and can change over time
- Two types of product work: creating value and delivering value
- What is the difference between growth product manager, marketing manager, and core PM
- When user activation matters and you should focus on it
- User activation is one of the key levers for product growth
- The dos and don’ts of measuring user activation
- How “aha moment” and the path to it change depending on the use case
- How to find “aha moment”: a qualitative plus quantitative approach
- How to determine the conditions necessary for the “aha moment”
- Time to value: an important lever for user activation growth
- How time to value and product complexity shape user activation
- Product-level building blocks for designing activation
- When and why to add people to the user activation process
- Session analysis: an important tool for designing activation
- CJM: from first encounter to the “aha moment”
- Designing activation in reverse: value first, acquisition channels last
- User activation starts long before sign-up
- Value windows: finding when users are ready to benefit from your product
- Why objective vs. perceived product value matters for activation
- Testing user activation fit for diverse use cases
- When to invest in optimizing user onboarding and activation
- Optimize user activation by reducing friction and strengthening motivation
- Reducing friction, strengthening user motivation: onboarding scenarios and solutions
- How to improve user activation by obtaining and leveraging additional user data
- Tax/benefit framework for analyzing user activation
- How well do you articulate value during user activation? Check with the value communication framework
- How product teams get the “aha moment” wrong
- Slack vs Teams vs Workplace: the intriguing dynamics of the work messenger market
- How the “Slack vs Microsoft Teams” race evolves as the world switches to remote work
- How Revolut Trading was built. The importance of industry expertise and the balance of conservative and new approaches
- The values and principles of Wise. Key ideas from the Breakout Growth Podcast by Sean Ellis
- How to calculate customer Lifetime Value. The do’s and don’ts of LTV calculation
- Guide to ARPU: formula, calculation example, LTV vs ARPU
- How to calculate unit economics for your business
- Experiments where you make your product worse – the most underrated product manager tool
- Why your A/B tests take longer than they should
- Peeking problem – the fatal mistake in A/B testing and experimentation
- Mistakes in A/B testing: guide to failing the right way
- Designing product experiments: template and examples
- To reduce your product’s churn rate, first find out why users stay
- What is product/market fit and how to measure PMF
- How engagement metrics can be misleading
- How to forecast key product metrics through cohort analysis
- Cohort analysis. Product metrics vs growth metrics
- Correlation and causation: how to tell the difference and why it matters for products
- How product habits are formed and what dopamine has to do with it
- Hook Model: encouraging a product habit to improve retention
- Not every product is habit-forming, but all products can have loyal users
- How to design and run JTBD research interviews: guide and templates
- Where to start as an aspiring product manager?
- How to move from product analytics to product management?
- Is product management the right choice for you? This is your checklist
- Common mistakes made by junior product managers and how to overcome them
- Product sense demystified. The importance behind the buzzword
- Using data for strategic decisions
- The downsides of a data-driven culture
- Moving from a startup to an enterprise as a product manager
- Using data to understand competitive and market dynamics
- Data-driven, data-informed, and data-inspired product decisions. What are the differences and when should you use each one?
- Pros and cons of a data-driven culture
- Quantitative vs qualitative data: what is the difference and when should you use one instead of the other
- Losing sight of real users and their needs behind the metrics. How can product teams avoid this?
- How to move from engineering to product management?
- How to establish effective collaboration between product managers and data analysts
- Metrics to focus on before and after product/market fit. How to better understand your product at different stages?
- How can PMs encourage more teammates to use data?
- Data cherry-picking to support your hypothesis. What is it? Why is it bad?
- Data mistakes to know and avoid as a product manager
- Key data skills for product managers: experienced PMs sharing their thoughts
- How to increase the effectiveness of your product analysts
- Why every team member should know the key product metrics
- How to move from marketing to product management?
- Key data skills for product managers: experienced PMs sharing their thoughts
- Product manager skills: evolution of a PM role and its transformation
- What is the difference between growth product manager, marketing manager, and core PM
- How to move from engineering to product management?
- Product growth, reinvented: what growth hacking is (and isn’t)
- Moving from a startup to an enterprise as a product manager
- Product manager interview: real questions plus guide for employers and candidates
- Rolling retention, Day N retention, and the many facets of the retention metric
- Long-term retention—the foundation of sustainable product growth
- Retention: how to understand, calculate, and improve it
- Errors in calculating ROI and unit economics. Impact of attribution models and incrementality on the ROI calculation of marketing channels
- Traffic attribution models. Why attribution models need to change along with growth channels, product, business objective and external environment