Product Analytics vs. Behavioral Analytics: What’s the Difference?
What separates product analytics from behavioral analytics? Product analytics is analyzing user engagement with a product or service. Businesses use product analytics to improve user engagement. They identify challenges, make improvements, and optimize product features.
Behavioral analytics is a subset of data analytics that provides insight into people’s actions related to online purchases. In e-commerce, online gaming, social media platforms, and other applications, behavioral analytics helps identify opportunities for optimization. This makes it easier to achieve specific product performances or business outcomes.
The impact of product analytics and behavioral analytics links very well. Despite their likeness, there is a difference between the two, as they have distinct roles and responsibilities.
Product analytics examines the product across multiple stages, including the company’s initial marketing efforts and sales practices. Product analytics focuses on the company’s leading development. Their product research takes years and never ends because they need to make their product successful.
That said, behavior analytics provides solutions for data management, team communication, and security training. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and cutting-edge digital technologies are its products.
Product Analytics vs. Behavioral Analytics: How Does it Work?
Product analytics involves a series of information that recommends the best products and launch strategies to increase a company’s profitability. This is how product analytics platforms work best.
Product analytics involves several departments within a company analyzing product data to make recommendations. It consists of compiling product data and interviewing customers to receive customer feedback. The primary responsibility of product analytics is to implement product analytics platforms.
However, the foundation of behavioral analytics is hard data. It uses the massive amounts of raw data people generate using social media, gaming applications, marketing, retail sites, or applications.
Behavioral analytics collects user flow data and analyzes it before using it to make certain decisions. This includes determining future trends or business activity, like ad placement in a digital product.
Let’s take an in-depth look at the difference between product and behavioral analytics.
How Does Product Analytics Work?
Product analytics consists of analyzing market data to assist businesses in developing product marketing strategies. It compares a company’s product to industry trends to ensure that it is appropriate and profitable using its product analytics platform.
Product analysts use market data to assist companies in developing product analytics software and marketing strategies. It does this by comparing a company’s product and industry trends and ensuring that it is most suitable and profitable.
Product analytics tools assess company products to determine whether they meet the company’s current and future needs.
It also contributes to product ratings and reviews. Analyzing behavioral data improves products while developing and managing small-to-medium-sized projects. It also helps with costing, inventory control, planning, and budgeting. In addition, it uses data analysis software to determine a product’s potential sales and profitability. It also develops strategies to improve the product’s performance.
For successful product analytics, tracking product performance in the market to meet and exceed sales forecasts is essential. High-performing product analytics keeps product costs within the company’s budget.
Product analytics has four main components:
- Defining strategies
- Identifying target markets
- Analyzing results
- Managing product life cycles
Product analytics defines an organization’s structure, policies, and operations and recommends solutions to achieve its goals.
How Does Behavioral Analytics Work?
Behavioral data is information generated by or responding to a customer’s interaction with a company. Page views, email sign-ups, and other essential user actions are examples of this. Web pages, mobile applications, CRM systems, cell centers, help desks, marketing automation systems, and invoice systems are all common sources of behavioral data.
Behavioral analytics investigates the “whats” and “hows” of customer behavioral data to better understand the “whys” of customer behavior. This includes tracking page views, email sign-ups, and other critical actions such as registration. These crucial day-to-day business intelligence tools enable businesses to improve conversion, engagement, and retention.
Constructing an entire picture of your customer journey requires three main behavioral analytics tools:
- Segmentation analysis
- Funnel analysis
- Cohort analysis.
Each of these analytics tools plays a unique role in user conversion, engagement, and retention.
That said, behavioral analytics drives sales through ad placement or suggested products. Let’s take a closer look at the various types of behavior analytics and how their work improves a company’s overall performance.
- E-commerce and retail: This type assists in making product recommendations and forecasting future sales trends based on consumers’ current preferences.
- Online gaming: This helps forecast usage trends and preferences for future offerings. As gaming companies move away from packaged products, they are turning to behavioral analytics to target their players with specific in-game upsells.
- Application development: Companies learn how people use apps to forecast future trends. Companies, similar to online gaming analytics, offer upgrades within the app based on behavioral patterns.
- Security: Both government agencies and private companies worldwide use this type of analytics to detect compromised information by detecting unusual activity.
How Do Product Analytics and Behavioral Analytics Work Together?
In today’s organizations, product analytics and behavior analytics share various responsibilities for any product developed. They ensure the product performs well in the market and that the company earns the expected return on investment.
That said, product analytics involves market research and data analysis to identify consumer behaviors and trends. Based on the analysis, it makes recommendations and provides launch strategies to increase profitability. Product analytics tracks product performance and recommends behavior analysts to improve sales forecasts.
Behavioral analytics improves your company’s conversion, engagement, and retention rates. Every team member should gain actionable insight using the correct behavioral analytics tool. Doing so influences answers to their questions and leverages data.
The relevance and importance of product and behavioral analytics are indisputable. Companies require specialists in this field to reap the full benefits of one or the other. If you want to advance in either field, there are options. So let’s have a look at related career considerations.
Who Earns More: Product Analyst or Behavior Analyst?
A product analyst earns an annual amount of around $74,000. In other words, $35.79 per hour. However, there is some variation in how much a product analyst earns, ranging from an annual salary of $50,000 to $102,000. Location, industry, and certifications influence a product analyst’s position.
The average user behavior analyst’s salary is around $63,000. However, the earning potential grows with experience, especially given the field’s skyrocketing trajectory.
According to Payscale, the average behavior analyst earns $62,439 per year. The bottom 10% made around $47,000, while the top 10% earned around $78,000. Board certification takes time and effort but pays off in the long run.
Choosing Between Product Analytics vs. Behavioral Analytics
Data is the new currency of modern businesses. Everyone needs to use behavioral data analysis and product analytics data to drive their business, regardless of industry. When marketers, product analysts, and data analysts use behavioral analysis tools, they begin to see their customers as people rather than data points.
Career Path
Regarding product and behavior analysts, both roles start from an entry-level position and advance toward senior positions in the tech industry.
There are two non-negotiable skills that both a product analyst and a behavior analyst need. These include getting a bachelor’s in a business or marketing-related field. These studies offer uncanny insight into market research and analytics. The following five steps are essential for both careers:
- Earn a degree
- Choose a specialty in your field
- Get an entry-level position
- Advance in your career
- Continue education, if it’s required
Skills
Product and behavior analysts need excellent digital skills and familiarity with technical information structures. However, specialized knowledge of their job field is also compulsory. Let’s look at the different skills required for these roles below.
Skills needed for product analytics
- Excellent communication with the marketing team.
- Business acumen and functionality.
- Ability to ask the right questions during customer interviews.
- Solid understanding of google analytics.
- Technical skills such as understanding a product analytics tool.
- Customer experience analysis.
- Strong knowledge of the entire customer journey.
Skills needed for behavior analytics
- Practical Microsoft Excel skills.
- Solid understanding of user behaviors.
- Ability to analyze and interpret essential data points.
- Exceptional capability to capture, store and access data.
- Ability to apply data analysis to business needs, including finance, sales, marketing, operations, and HR management.
Job Responsibilities and Duties of a Product Analyst
- Conduct market research, solicit customer feedback, evaluate products, and predict performance.
- Make product launch strategy recommendations.
- Produce reports and presentations based on results and findings.
- Analyze market data, trends, and behaviors to monitor product performance.
Job Responsibilities and Duties of a Behavior Analyst
- Gather behavioral data.
- Identify patterns with behavioral analytics tools.
- Write reports on customer behavior.
- Work with stakeholders.
- Introduce their findings.
- Make systems to ensure customer lifetime value.
Certifications
Courses and certifications allow analysts to demand a promotion or a salary increase. Getting a certification not only enhances and shapes your resume but increases your chances of selection for either of these roles.
When visualizing your analytics career path, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. It’s possible to specialize and continue to add more complex skills to your repertoire as you become a product or behavioral analyst.
Design a career that speaks to your interests and talents once you’ve mastered analytics fundamentals. Every analyst’s career path begins with the same steps: learning the essential tools, skills, and processes. This includes developing a professional portfolio.
That said, let’s take a look below at the requirements you’ll need for these fields.
1. Certifications needed for a Product Analyst:
- Bachelor’s degree in Economics, finance, or a related field, plus five years of product analysis experience
- MS Office and database program proficiency
- Excellent written and oral communication skills
- Exceptional problem-solving and multitasking abilities
- Superior time management abilities
2. Certifications needed for a Behavioral Analyst
- A Degree in psychology, applied behavior analysis, or a related field
- Certification as a behavior analyst or a suitable equivalent
- Demonstrated experience as a behavior analyst
- In-depth understanding of and strict adherence to applicable ethical codes
In some cases, companies hire data analysts or behavior analysts because of the experience they have in the field. To advance in their careers, these analysts should consider further studies.
