Finest-5 Product reads #29

React for Product Managers, reverse trials, etc.

Harsh Jain
3 min readJul 2, 2022

Hi,

As I launched my product, bugs flowed in, and my tech background came to the rescue. I got into the details and started working with developers to understand how things are taking so much time. However, if you do not have a tech background, knowing a little about architecture level stuff can be very helpful.

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React Explained for Product Managers

React is one of the most popular languages today for building web platforms. As a product manager, knowing the basics of react is always helpful to understand what tech around you is about.

Key Takeaways:

  • React is a complex engineering solution that helps developers build user interfaces
  • We can think of React in three layers: Components & hooks, Core Algorithm, Browser
  • React has a comprehensive ecosystem. There are communities, platforms, and libraries for almost every aspect of web development.

How “aha moment” and the path to it change depending on the use case

Every successful product has an aha moment, the point where the user experiences the real value of the product, for example food delivered and tasted good. Some products are complex and have different aha moments based on use cases.

Key Takeaways:

  • Onboarding and activation bridge the gap between the objective value of the product and the subjective experience of the user.
  • For different use cases, the added value and the “aha moment” and the conditions for its achievement differ significantly.
  • Some products solve many tasks for users. But users often start using the product for one or two key tasks, and later adopt other use cases.

Your guide to reverse trials

In a reverse trial, new users start with a time-limited trial of your paid features. At the end of the trial, they can either buy or downgrade to a fully free tier.

Key Takeaways:

  • Freemium or free trial is a false trade-off. The reality is that you can have your cake and eat it, too.
  • Offering a free version can make less sense when revenue is a top priority. It may create an expectation that the product shouldn’t be ‘expensive’, or anchor users at a lower price point.
  • With the reverse trial approach in mind, I’d recommend giving away freely any feature which enables and accelerates top-of-funnel user growth.

Un-BELT your consumer problems to create successful infrequent products

A problem is defined as the difference between things as desired and things as perceived”. The BELT framework provides an approach to help classify these consumer problems and insights.

Key Takeaways:

  • If the behaviour already exists, there is likely enough consumer inertia for two reasons for an infrequent product: switching costs and searching costs.
  • When identifying consumer problems, a lot of people get hung up on solving transient problems first instead of focusing on the problems that actually matter.
  • Products often underestimate the value of meeting expectations while overestimating the value of exceeding customer expectations.

3 Methodologies to Making Data the Heartbeat of Your Business

We all hear about the importance of data in business. But how well we understand data and how we use the data are also important factors.

Key Takeaways:

  • Some take a “data-driven” approach, using collected data directly to make decisions
  • Some take a “data-informed” approach, analysing multiple data inputs in context, leveraging individuals’ experience and knowledge.
  • Some are “data-inspired,” particularly when there is little to no data and only proxy information, experience, and intuition on which to rely.

Product of the Week: Ballpark

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