A deep understanding of how users interact with your product is critical for PMs at every stage of their product's lifecycle. Whether you are building new features, trying to improve customer experience or battling poor retention - user behavior forms the foundation of your product strategy.

1. Sandhya Hegde | Director of Product | sandhya@amplitude.com | @sandhya on Twitter
Product
Analytics
Understanding your user
behavior at scale

2. Engineer
VC
Sandhya Hegde
Director of Product, Amplitude
Founder
Winding path to product
ABOUT SANDHYA

3. Increasingly low
barriers to entry
Explosion in product
choice & noise: 5M apps
Customer experience is
paramount: 0.01% survive
Product is the best
competitive advantage
Amplitude | Helping companies build better products

4. Behavioral analytics is the new standard in product and user insights
WHAT’S NEW
● Go beyond vanity metrics like sessions and DAUs to
understand actions that matter
● Segment users based on what they are doing in your
product, not demographics
● Understand how to engage different types of users to build
better products
1
2
3

5. Launched a
new
notification
How many
users
received
one?
Is it
improving
my product?
Behavioral analytics helps you understand the why behind the what
WHAT’S NEW

7. Define
your
behavioral
metrics
Strategy
1
Identify
drivers of the
desired behavior
Execution
2
Optimize
product by
doubling down on
drivers
Impact
3
Adopting behavioral analytics is a 3 step process
GET STARTED

8. Define
Your
behavioral
metrics
Strategy
1
Identify
drivers of the
desired behavior
Execution
2
Optimize
product by
doubling down on
drivers
Impact
3
Adopting behavioral analytics is a 3 step process
DEFINE

9. A good behavioral metric illuminates both the customer and the product
DEFINE
Measure
Customer Value
Represent
Product Strategy
1 2

10. attention transaction productivity
Total time spent
engaging
# Purchases per
returning customer
# Teams using >
2/week
There are typically 3 types of metrics based on core engagement model
DEFINE

11. Product personas can be crafted based on behavioral patterns
DEFINE
Frequen
t
Regular
● X times/week
● Majority at work
● Single meals
● X times/quarter
● At home
● Family meals
transaction

12. What type of behavioral metric do you think your product needs?
1
2
3
Attention - I want users to just spend more time
Transaction - I want users to keep making purchases
Productivity - I want users to accomplish more tasks
Engagement models
POLL

13. Define
desired
behavioral
metric
Strategy
1
Identify
drivers of desired
behavior
Execution
2
Optimize
product for those
drivers
Impact
3
Adopting behavioral analytics is a 3 step process
IDENTIFY

14. Segment your user personas based on their lifecycle
IDENTIFY
What
onboarding
features best
convert my new
users to
activated?
What workflows engage my
current users?
What features drive retention
and monetization of power
users?
How do we fight
churn?
Desired
outcomes?

15. What type of user is your focus point right now?
1
2
3
New users - I am working on better onboarding and activation
Current/Power - I am building new features for power users
Dormant/Resurrected- I’m bringing churned users back
Customer Lifecycle
POLL

16. Behavioral reports like pathing & correlations help identify driving actions
IDENTIFY

17. Segment your users based on what they did or didn’t do
IDENTIFY

18. Compare critical metrics like retention between doers and not doers
IDENTIFY
Week over week retention
Doers
Not doers

19. Compare critical metrics like conversion between doers and not doers
IDENTIFY
Doers
Not doers

20. What type of outcome are you trying to optimize for your product right now?
1
2
3
Engagement - I want users to try a new feature
Conversion - I want users to complete a workflow
Retention - I want users to come back
Product outcomes
POLL

21. Define
desired
behavioral
metric
Strategy
1
Identify
drivers of desired
behavior
Execution
2
Optimize
product for those
drivers
Impact
3
Adopting behavioral analytics is a 3 step process
GET STARTED

22. ● Meditation service
● 30 employees
● Started in 2014
● Financial Software as a service
● 7,900 employees
● Started in 1983
Background Behavioral Metric
# of returning users
performing a meditation
session
# of self employed
professional getting their
invoices paid on time

24. ??
?
Who are these users???
all graphs represent hypothetical data

25. < 1% Weekly Active Users (WAU)
??
?
all graphs represent hypothetical data

27. They’re users who set a reminder!
3x the Retention
all graphs represent hypothetical data
Strategy

28. 40%
of users who saw the prompt
turned on the reminder
Strategy
Execution

29. $22M in
recurring
revenue
Strategy
Execution
Impact

30. ● Meditation service
● 30 employees
● Started in 2014
● Financial Software as a service
● 7,900 employees
● Started in 1983
Background Behavioral Metric
# of returning users
performing a meditation
session
# of self employed
professional getting their
invoices paid on time

32. Intuit Quickbooks launched a new invoicing feature w/ poor KPIs
CASE STUDY
Customers were creating invoices in Quickbooks but not
enough of them (<21%) were getting paid on time
Behavior
Problem
Strategy

33. Amplitude helped them prioritize their backlog to fit the customer journey
CASE STUDY
Customers were creating invoices in Quickbooks but not
enough of them (<21%) were getting paid on time
Behavior
Problem
Strategy
Execution
Amplitude helped them discover that this was because end
users & clients coming from Gmail domains were dropping
off. Gmail has >1B DAUs so they prioritized a Quickbooks
Gmail plugin
Feature
Insight

34. The Connect Plugin is not the fastest growing Intuit product
CASE STUDY
Strategy
Execution
Impact
Behavior
Problem
Feature
Insight
Quickbooks Connect has doubled # invoices paid on time
and decreased # clicks needed to get paid
Improved
Outcomes

35. Behavioral analytics is the new standard in product and user insights
RECAP
● Go beyond vanity metrics like sessions and DAUs to
understand actions that matter
● Segment users based on what they are doing in your
product, not demographics
● Understand how to engage different types of users to build
better products
1
2
3

36. Define
your
behavioral
metrics
Strategy
1
Identify
drivers of the
desired behaviors
Execution
2
Optimize
product by
doubling down on
drivers
Impact
3
Adopting behavioral analytics is a 3 step process
RECAP

37. Questions?
sandhya@amplitude.com