With the ever-growing dominance of the internet, digital product management is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the product industry. But digital product management has many differences from traditional product management, and should be approached differently.

Keep reading to learn what makes digital product management unique, the skills you need to succeed in the industry, and the best practices you can implement to maximize your productivity.

What makes a digital product manager different?

Digital product management is a specific subset of product management, and it has its own unique dimensions. As such, there are many differences between a traditional, mainstream product manager and a digital product manager.

For one, as the final deliverable or product will be digital, digital product management requires continuous experimentation throughout the entire product lifecycle. The industry is constantly changing--even moreso than with traditional products--and that means you'll have to adapt to these changes as they happen.

Furthermore,  decisions in digital product management are often made on data instead of relying on opinions and assumptions. The specific nature of digital technologies or products means that there is often more data to pull from, and data dominates every facet of their role: digital product managers will need to measure product success across a wider variety of metrics and analyze them, too.

Like other product managers, digital product managers are responsible for leading their product's development and analyzing the market for upcoming trends and changes to gain an advantage over competitors. They must develop a strong connection with customers and shareholders in order to balance these two often competing wishlists, and they're often responsible for prioritizing the product roadmap.

Essentially, digital product managers are often more well-rounded than traditional product managers. While they may spend less time overseeing day-to-day engineering tasks, they are often more externally-oriented and data focused.

What skills do digital product managers need?

Though many of the mainstream product management skills still apply to digital product managers, there are several important differences we'd like to touch on in both hard and soft skills.

Prioritization

Almost every product manager will have to work with limited resources and time. That means you'll have to figure out which initiatives and backlog items need to be prioritized and given more resources and which can be pushed to later. Digital product managers will have to look at the data available to them and make prioritization decisions based off of that.

Rapid deployment

As we mentioned before, digital product management is often fast-paced and changes quickly and frequently. This means that in order to be successful in a digital world, digital PMs must be able to lead their teams in rapid iteration and deployment of features. This is why many digital development teams use agile frameworks and principles, as this style is well-suited for flexible and rapidly-changing workflows.

Check out some of our other posts on product management frameworks and agile development.

Design thinking

User experience is one of the most essential components of any digital product. Think of your favourite products; would you like or use them as much if they had bad UX?

People want software or apps that are clean, easy-to-use, and intuitive. And creating a great customer experience starts at the top: digital product managers must keep design in mind at every stage of development in order to create a good, successful product.

Research and negotiation skills

Research and negotiation skills are important for any product manager, but they can be even more helpful when you don't have a physical product to show. Knowing your audience and finding product-market fit is crucial in helping you create a successful product, but you'll need your research and negotiation skills for far more. 

Being a product manager requires you to be the go-between between your team, other teams, stakeholders and customers. Figuring out how to best satisfy all of these groups requires excellent communication and negotiation skills.

Data understanding

As digital products are so data-driven, digital PMs must be able to understand usage data and metrics. Tracking how users use their products can help them figure out what is and isn't working in their product, and as such, digital PMs must be able to read and interpret these analytics into actionable insights.

Creativity

Last but not least, digital PMs need to be creative. The digital landscape is different, and will often require creative and unique solutions to continue innovate and growing. Being able to think outside of the box can be immensely helpful.

What are the best practices to develop a successful digital product strategy?

Now that we've discussed the skills you need to excel in the digital product management arena, let's go over some of our most important tips and tricks.

Center user needs

Your customers should always be the focal point in digital product development, as they're the ones who will determine whether or not your product will become successful.

Make sure you're keeping them in mind through every stage of development, and place particular emphasis on user research and customer feedback. You need to know what they want and work towards that within your product team.

Prioritize marketing channels based on success

As we mentioned, digital product managers have a particular focus on data and metrics as a way to boost customer satisfaction and product success. This also applies to product marketing.

While digital PMs don't have to take on the role of marketing managers, they should be in the loop with current and past marketing strategies in order to figure out what works best. Did one ad campaign have more success than another? Are you seeing more results and sign-ups on a specific social media channel?

All of this data will help you fine-tune your product's marketing approach and figure out where to allocate more or less resources.

Collaborate across all product teams

This is one of our best tips for all product managers. Your development team isn't the only one working on your product; every team within your company, from customer support to your marketing team to your sales team, has a vital role in making your product vision successful.

Having open channels of communication and collaboration between all of these teams helps boost workflow and keeps everyone in the loop. And as a bonus, each team will have their own unique view on your product, giving you a wide range of information to pull from when making decisions.

Take advantage of SaaS tools and other digital products

If your product is digital, you have even more reason to move the majority of your workflow online. Digital product management tools and SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms can be immensely helpful in improving your productivity and boosting collaboration and communication in the process.

There are many different tools you can use in your product management workflow. In fact, we've talked about many of our favourite SaaS tools before as well as our favourite product management tools. There's no shortage of tools to choose from, but we suggest looking into CRM tools, communication channels, and user feedback management platforms.

Our own SaaS product, UserVitals, is particularly helpful for digital product managers looking to get the most out of their customer feedback.

We pull in user feedback from all around the web via a customer portal, integrations with platforms like Slack and HelpScout, and a Google Chrome extension to help you view all of your data in the same place. Each piece of information, or individual Insight, can then be organized and grouped into Stories based on anything from common themes, info sources, location within the customer journey, and much more. This will in turn allow you to look at the bigger picture and notice patterns within the feedback that can help guide your product vision and development.

UserVitals also helps you build a customized roadmap and changelog to keep your users up-to-date with any new updates and plans for the future. This is a great way to help you close the feedback loop with your customers and make them feel more involved in your product.

‍