Category posts
New topics to discuss
Ideas and reflections on product management, growth, marketing, analytics and market.
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
If the first version of your product is complex and hard for users to understand, you’re doing something wrong
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
There is a lot of talk among product people about being data-driven
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
Product managers do many, many things
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
Day 1 retention of 65%! A mobile game with that kind of retention must be something special, right?
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
There are two different types of product work. Creating value and delivering value
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
PMs often cite experiences at previous companies when justifying product decisions. Don’t do this
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
Product teams love measuring changes in engagement. Usually with metrics like time or actions “per active user”. But such metrics can be misleading
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
People assume that product/market fit is a binary thing. It isn’t
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
Your team almost certainly has contradictory ideas about what your product’s growth model is
Author:
Oleg Ya
Oleg Ya
Most PMs focus exclusively on objective product value. But users make decisions based on perceived product value
Other content series
that you might find useful
Product management fundamentals
- Addressing user pain points vs solving user problems better
- Product manager skills: evolution of a PM role and its transformation
- Product metrics, growth metrics, and added value metrics
- Customer retention levers: task frequency and added value
- 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
User activation
- 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
Successful products stories
- 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
Unit economics
- 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
Tests and experiments
- 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
Product analytics: tools and hints
- 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
Interviews with expert PMs
- 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 move from marketing to product management?
Professions and skills
- 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
Everything about Retention
- 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
Managing advertisement channels
- 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