What Is a Product Analyst? Skills, Tasks, and How to Become One

Key takeaways

• Product analysts look closely at a range of data to guide product strategy.

• The role could be a good fit if you enjoy working with data and are curious, analytical, and collaborative.

• After gaining experience as a product analyst, you can advance to become a product manager or product marketing manager.

Learn more about what's involved with being a product analyst, including major responsibilities and skills necessary to be successful. Afterward, consider building your knowledge in this area with the IBM Product Manager Professional Certificate.

What is a product analyst?

Product analysts are an important part of the product development and management process, contributing to every stage of the product life cycle. They conduct research on the market, customers, and competitors, gathering and analyzing that data to offer insights meant to improve a company's products or services.

Earning potential

Product analysts can command high salaries. According to Glassdoor, the median total pay for this job title is $113,000 per year [1]. This figure tends to include additional pay, such as bonuses and equity. Learn more about the different factors that can affect your earning potential as a product analyst.

What does a product analyst do?

Product analysts are at the heart of product planning and development, helping teams create products by delivering data-driven insights about customers and markets, including areas of improvement in the product life cycle. They provide insight that drives management decisions on product direction and investment.

The main responsibilities of a product analyst can include:

• Gather and analyze customer feedback. The day-to-day role of a product analyst involves using data to understand customer perception of products. You may conduct in-depth interviews with individual customers, facilitate focus groups, or even create polls to collect feedback from many customers on specific issues related to the product you’re evaluating.

• Monitor product performance. As a product analyst, you’ll monitor the performance of products over their lifecycle. You'll identify patterns and trends that indicate how well a product performs on the market and subsequently monitor sales numbers and gather customer feedback data to gauge performance.

• Evaluate products and find ways to improve performance. You’ll draw insights about products from the data you’ve gathered. The goal of a product analyst is to evaluate products for potential improvements or updates and to study competitors' products (such as quality and price point) to ensure your product holds up in the market.

• Create reports and presentations about product data findings. Creating reports and presentations about data findings and insights is a frequent task as a product analyst. You’ll use charts, graphs, tables, or other visuals to represent the data in a way that other stakeholders can easily understand. Sometimes, you'll present the findings to senior management to justify your product recommendations.

Product analyst vs. data analyst: What’s the difference? 

Data analysts interpret large volumes of company data to derive actionable insights and improve business performance over time. Product analysts, while similar, focus on product-driven performance, analyzing data to better understand user interactions and measure the outcomes of product changes. Data analysts often work alongside product managers and developers.

Important skills to develop as a product analyst

Whether you're interested in becoming a product analyst, pivoting to this role from something else, or strengthening your skills in this career, it's important to develop the technical and workplace skills outlined below.

Technical skills

Some of the technical proficiencies you'll need to succeed as a product analyst include:

Data analytics and the ability to work with data analysis tools are crucial to being a product analyst. Some techniques include:

• Cohort analysis

• A/B testing

• Retention analysis

• Heat mapping

• Form analysis

• Funnel analysis

• Session replay

• User survey

User research is a systematic investigation of target users' needs, behaviors, preferences, and pain points through various qualitative and quantitative methods. It aims to inform product design and development decisions and create more user-centered and effective solutions.

Structured query language (SQL) is essential for any product analyst, enabling you to extract information from various databases across your organization. You’ll need SQL to gain access to the data you want to work with for your analysis. You may also need not only SQL (NoSQL) data skills if your company uses big data warehouses of unstructured data.

Product metrics are quantitative measurements that track and evaluate various aspects of a product's performance, usage, and impact. They provide crucial insights for decision-making and continuous improvement in product development and management.

Workplace skills

Product analysts work on teams that are often highly cross-functional and collaborative. The skills below are useful for working successfully with others.

Communication: As a product analyst, you'll need to share your findings with others, in presentations and in written reports. You must also explain technical information and data-driven insights to non-technical colleagues.

Collaboration: A product analyst's findings often impact the work of other employees. It's crucial for you to be able to effectively share information with colleagues, gracefully accept feedback, and use collaborative efforts to improve your work processes.

Organization: The need to work on multiple projects simultaneously may exist, so you need to be organized and keep track of each project. You’ll also need to be careful about keeping data up-to-date. Outdated numbers and disorganized data will affect your ability to draw insights.

How to become a product analyst

While there can sometimes be entry-level product analyst roles available to explore, it's more common to see companies require at least a few years of relevant experience, in marketing, data analytics, or business analysis, before advancing to become a product analyst. Use the guidance below to become a product analyst.

Earn a degree.

Given the technical nature of this work, many employers expect candidates to have a bachelor's degree. In fact, over 73 percent of product analysts have a bachelor's degree [2]. Relevant majors can include data science, business, economics, or computer science.

Develop key skills.

There are many skills necessary to succeed as a product analyst, which we've outlined above. To get started, focus on strengthening your data analysis, business acumen, and communication skills, as well as your market research techniques.

Build your product experience.

Gain hands-on experience working with product development through internships or personal projects. If you're currently employed in a related field and are interested in transitioning to product analysis, consider looking for opportunities to work cross-functionally with other teams to gain critical experience.

Consider certifications.

Enhance your resume with credentials that attest to the extra effort you've taken to formalize your knowledge. Look for relevant certifications in data analysis or product management.

Network and stay updated.

Join professional associations, attend industry conferences, and participate in online forums related to product analysis. Networking with professionals in the field can be a great way to learn about opportunities as they open.

Apply for relevant jobs.

Keep an eye on job posting sites for product analyst openings. In the meantime, work on refining your resume by highlighting relevant skills and tailoring that document to each job you apply to. Prepare for your product analyst interview by practicing answering questions you're likely to be asked.

Product analyst: career advancement

Gaining experience as a product analyst can lead to managerial roles with high pay. Some of the roles you might advance to include:

• Product marketing manager: $141,000 [3]

• Product manager: $147,000 [4]

• Product director: $283,000 [5]

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