PMs & Metrics: Retention Rate

During our last post of the PMs & Metrics series, we covered the details of the conversion rate. In today’s post, we’ll be going over another important metric that PMs should be familiar with – the customer retention rate.

The customer retention rate measures the proportion of customers that have continued to use your product over a period of time. 

“Retention rate: proportion of customers that have continued to use your product over time.”

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There are two key phrases here to pay extra attention to – “continued to use” and “period of time.” Let’s break them down further.

“Continued to use” refers to customers that have been using your product, and does not include brand new customers. Keep this in mind because we’ll be seeing this concept again when we discuss the formula to calculate retention rate. Continue Reading

Opticon 2015: 10 Secrets to Building an Amazing Mobile Testing Roadmap

Over the past couple of days, I’ve had the opportunity to attend Opticon 2015, a huge conference for the experience optimization and testing community. Hosted by Optimizely, the event was a gold mine of information on A/B testing, personalization, and website experimentation.

This mini-series will contain summaries of some of the most helpful breakout sessions I attended. As data becomes easier to gather and all-the-more important in company decision making, product managers should constantly be aware of the latest and greatest in how best to test and make data-backed decisions.

In this post, I’ll be summarizing the main points from Esben Rasmussen and Jeppe Dyrby’s excellent “10 Secrets to Building an Amazing Mobile Testing Roadmap session”. Esben and Jeppe are both engineers on a dedicated A/B testing team at eBay in Denmark. Continue Reading

5 Tips for New Product Managers

New Product Manager Starting off as a new product manager might seem daunting. There are so many things to learn in such a short period of time, and you’re expected to provide the vision and roadmap for your team almost right away.

This post will cover some tips to help new product managers start off on the right foot. From understanding the market to meeting your team to getting the big picture, these action items provide a nice framework to approach the product manager role, whether you’re new to the company, the industry, or the profession itself.

1. Understand the market, the customers, and the product

One of the most important first steps for a new product manager is to understand the market. The best way to do so is to get as close to the customer as you can. Figure out how your company interacts with customers (listening labs, customer visits, formal/informal focus groups, customer support) and set a schedule right away to get involved. You want to understand the market and customer needs as quickly as you can because it will enable you to craft a great product. Starting with the group that will be directly affected by that product is a good bet. Continue Reading

Gaining Respect as a Non-Technical PM

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If you’ve been following the PM world even for a bit, you’ve probably come across the age-old question of how technical product managers should be. In many software startups and larger technology companies, technical backgrounds have become a strong requirement for PMs. However, this is not an absolute rule and there are valid reasons why PMs do not have to come from engineering backgrounds in order to successfully deliver products.

This post aims to provide a quick look into ways non-technical PMs can succeed on the job and gain respect from the engineering team.

1. Communicate a strong vision for the product

As a PM, your primary responsibility is answering the what and why of the product rather than the how. One of the first things you should be absolutely comfortable with is developing a thorough understanding of your customer, the market, and the competition. Continue Reading

How Do Product Managers & UX Designers Work Together?

Product Manager and UX Designer

In many companies, the product manager and the UX designer roles go hand in hand. This week’s post is an introduction to the UX designer role, how it’s similar (and different) to the product manager role, and how the two effectively work together to deliver a great product.

Before who dive deeper into the two roles, let’s first explain the role of the UX designer. User experience (UX) design is a discipline that covers the end-to-end experience of a product. UX designers are responsible for understanding the target users’ challenges when using a particular product and then designing an elegant solution that helps users solve those challenges.

It just so happens that this overlaps with product managers’ goals. It’s not surprising that there’s a lot of confusion where one role ends and the other begins. In fact, in many smaller startups, the product manager is also the UX designer. This person is expected to understand the market and business goals, the user needs, and the best way to prioritize features and manage a team. Continue Reading

How to Work with Stakeholders as a PM

Product Manager Stakeholders

Apart from the day to day responsibilities, PMs must learn the skill of partnering with stakeholders. Stakeholder management is a highly underrated skill that’s often overlooked in favor of the immediate things, but truly great product managers are masters at communicating well to stakeholders and making sure that stakeholders are on board with the product vision and delivery plan.

What are stakeholders and why is it so important to make sure they’re on your side? Let’s break it down.

A project stakeholder is any person in the company who has the influence to impact your product.

“A project stakeholder is any person in the company who has the influence to impact your product.”

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An easy way to identify stakeholders is figuring out whether they have veto power – these interested parties have the potential to make or break your plans for release. Continue Reading