Product Research

What is product research?

Product research is all about building an understanding. Understanding a problem. Understanding the people you want to solve the problem for. And understanding what potential solutions suit the problem best. As a Product Manager, research should be a big part of your role, helping you build confidence in your approach and drive data-driven Product Management. 

Remember college and those big thousand-word essays you had to write? I bet the person with the highest grades in your class spent more time gathering resources and information than they did actually writing the thing. 

This speaks to how important research is. You’re not going to create anything good, anything of value, without learning about the subject area. This is the same when it comes to your product. Product research improves your understanding of crucial things like your customers, competitors, market, and even your own product performance. 

With product research, you can act with more certainty that your approach through your product development process is validated. 

There are a million and one ways to do product research, and multiple times during the Product Management lifecycle where you’re going to want to whip out the test tubes to do some testing and product research. We’ll touch on that in more detail later on.

To be a good Product Manager who operates based on data and insight instead of hunches and guestimations, you need to embed product research into every aspect of your workflow. It needs to be part of your daily routine as a Product Manager. 

Research isn’t just something you do once and then forget about it. As a PM, every day needs to be a school day. So get learning. 

Product research vs product discovery

Product research and product discovery can often get confused with one another. With both, you’re finding something out, you’re learning something new, but they focus on different things. 

Product research is all about finding the truth. Information about your product, customers, market – whatever it may be – that can guide future decision-making. 

Product discovery is more focused on the activities that help you decide what to create next. Product discovery is about validating ideas and testing hypotheses to work out what customer problems are worth solving and the solutions that are worth building. It focuses on reducing uncertainty and ensuring the product delivers real value.

Product discovery is mainly done during the discovery stage of the Product Management Lifecycle, right at the beginning when you’re still figuring out what the best approach is. It’s all about validating your ideas to figure out what’s going to delight your users the most. 

The key thing here is that product discovery is bound to this stage of the lifecycle. 

Product research is far broader and encompasses all the other learning you’ll do during the development process – and trust us, you’ll be doing a lot of testing and learning. Product research is all about answering questions. 

Why are users churning? Finding that out is product research. 

What feature should we build next? Working out that answer is product discovery. 

There’s a lot more to know about product discovery if you want to master it. Learn more about it to better understand how it differs from product research:

Why is product research important? 

Why is breathing important? Product research is the backbone of Product Management. If we’re not out there finding out things about our customers and our own product performance, what’s the point? 

If you don’t know the things users in your target market like, how on earth are you going to build a good product for them? If you don’t know what features are working and not working, how on earth do you expect to improve things? 

Product research is the cornerstone of building a good product – a product that drives growth. It gets your head out of the sand and lets you see things much more clearly. 

Let’s shine a light on some of the benefits of product research: 

1. You’ll understand user needs and pain points
   Your product exists to solve problems – but if you don’t know what those problems are, even the best ideas could miss the mark. Product research uncovers the challenges your customers face, helping you design solutions that truly matter.
2. You can align user needs with business goals
   Great products strike a balance between customer satisfaction and business objectives. Research bridges the gap, ensuring that your roadmap supports user needs while being tied to the greater product strategy.
3. You can drive better innovation
   When you understand what customers want, you can think creatively about how to meet their needs. This clarity inspires innovative ideas and ensures that every feature or iteration hits the mark, and everything you do is customer-centric.
4. You’ll gain a competitive edge
   Product research lets you learn more about your competitors. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses helps you spot a market gap that you can fill to get your product to stand out.
5. You’ll streamline things
   With research-backed insights, prioritizing features and initiatives becomes a team effort grounded in customer value. This added knowledge makes it easier to refine your backlog and keep everyone focused on what matters most. 
6. You can challenge assumptions
   You may have a hunch or a preconceived idea that may not actually be true. Product research sorts the facts from fiction letting you make choices based on reality. 
7. You’ll boost performance
   Turning your attention to researching performance metrics can help you identify opportunities where you can improve and capitalize. Spending time to learn about your own product and how it’s being used can open the door to innovations that transform your product.

Simply put, product research gives you knowledge, and knowledge is power. Knowing your customers, competitors, market trends, and product feasibility gives you an omniscient point of view to make impactful decisions. 

What are the different types of product research?

There are soooo many different ways to do product research. That’s because there’s a lot of different things you can choose to find out that’s going to empower you as a product person. Every nugget of information gained about your product is a goldmine, and whatever way you find that out can be considered product research. 

Let’s crack this nut a bit more, and explore the different types of product research available to you:

Customer research

Customer research is all about getting into the minds of the people who use – or more crucially could use – your product. This process uncovers their needs, frustrations, and desires, providing the foundation for designing features, experiences, and marketing strategies that resonate. 

By understanding who your customers are and what they want, you can create a product that genuinely solves their problems and keeps them coming back.

Some of the best customer research methods include: 

• Customer interviews and surveys:
  Dive deeper into personal experiences, uncovering motivations, and pain points. You can use simple surveys embedded in your product, or invite certain customers for one-on-one interviews. Or, leverage your Customer Advisory Board and schedule a CAB meeting to interview a cross-section of your customers at once.
• User personas:
  Create detailed user persona profiles that represent your user base to better understand each user segment so that you can create products that resonate with them.
• Usability testing:
  Evaluate how easily users can navigate and accomplish tasks within your product by observing their interactions, identifying pain points, and gathering feedback to improve the overall user experience.

Market research 

Market research focuses on understanding the broader environment in which your product exists. This includes analyzing competitors, identifying trends, and spotting gaps or opportunities in the market. It helps ensure that your product fits into the landscape and remains competitive over time.

Various types of market research include: 

• SWOT Analysis: Identify your product’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the market, and see how it compares with your competitors. A SWOT analysis lets you better understand your competitors in the context of your product.
• Product Benchmarking: Analyze competitors’ offerings to understand your differentiation points. External product benchmarking lets you see how you’re against the standards in your industry.
• Trend Analysis: Monitor shifts in customer preferences, emerging technologies, or market conditions.

Product analysis 

Product analytics provide real-time data on how users interact with your product, helping you understand what’s working and where improvements are needed. It bridges the gap between assumptions and reality by showing patterns in user behavior and usage.

Product Analysis can include things like:

• Cohort Analysis: Study groups of users over time to evaluate retention and behavior trends.
• Funnel Analysis: Identify stages in the user journey where drop-offs occur, and optimize them.
• Heatmaps: Visualize user interaction with your product to highlight high- and low-engagement areas, helping to understand the most popular features of your product.
• Session Recordings: Replay user sessions to see firsthand how your product is navigated and experienced, allowing you to improve its usability.

Metrics and KPI tracking 

You don’t immediately think of metrics and KPI tracking as product research, but actually studying your performance against KPIs can be pretty useful knowledge to learn. Tracking metrics and KPIs ensures you’re measuring the success of your product against predefined goals. This data-driven approach provides insights into growth, engagement, and retention, helping you identify what’s working and what needs adjustment.

Some of the best metrics to track that can provide illuminating insights include:

• North Star Metrics: Define a single guiding metric to align your team’s efforts and measure performance against it.
• Product Launch Metrics: Evaluate the success of a product launch by tracking these metrics.
• Product Adoption Metrics: Measure how effectively users are integrating your product into their workflows.

Make sure you’re using the most effective KPIs by picking from the ultimate list you can download below: 

Product pricing research

Researching around your pricing strategy is an important way to see if you’re pitching your product right. This helps with product positioning, aligning the perceived value of your product with what customers are willing to pay. It will help you ensure that your pricing strategy supports profitability while remaining competitive.

Some great ways to research your product pricing are through:

• Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Analysis: A framework to determine the optimal price point for your target audience.
• Conjoint Analysis: A Product Management framework that identifies which product features customers value most to guide tiered pricing.

Learn more about these price-related product research methods – and more 👇 

When should you do product research?

Product research is a continuous responsibility. It’s like owning a dog, you can’t decide not to feed it one day. You’ve got to be committed to product research from day one. 

There are many times during the product development process and product lifecycle when product research is ESSENTIAL. 

Here are some moments when product research needs to be at the forefront of your mind: 

1. At the start: During idea validation

Before diving into the build phase, you need to validate your initial ideas to check that they’ll work. You don’t want to find out too late that the ideas actually suck.

Conduct research early on to help you refine your product concept and align it with user needs so that your product has a solid foundation from the very beginning.

2. When defining your product roadmap

Once you’ve figured out the core concept of your product, you next need to do product research when prioritizing feature ideas.

You need to understand what your users value most, which problems need solving, and how your product can evolve to meet those needs over time. This helps you focus on actions that will drive the best results and stops you from wasting time on things that won’t move the needle.

3. During product development

Throughout the development process, research should be used to test hypotheses and refine your approach.

Usability testing, A/B testing, and feedback loops help confirm that each iteration of your product or feature is meeting user expectations. This ongoing research prevents costly mistakes and allows for early adjustments. You want to encourage a culture of continuous improvement. 

4. When preparing for a launch

As you get closer to launch, product research helps you fine-tune your offering. Product research at this stage might include building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to see how your product idea fairs in the real world. Feedback from this will help you make tweaks to improve what you’re offering and double-check that you’re backing the right solution.

5. After launch

Don’t think that product research stops once your product is in users’ hands. After launch, you’ll learn the most by monitoring how users are engaging with your product.

Post-launch research helps you find areas for improvement, track user satisfaction, and uncover any bugs or features that need attention. It also informs future iterations and helps keep your product aligned with evolving user needs.

Who does product research? 

Do you think that one person does all the product research, sat there handling all the data and insight for the entire Product Team? Nah, product research is something that everyone is involved in and should have a hand in. It’s a collaborative effort. 

Yeah, okay, some folk may take the lead, but it’s a task that spans multiple roles within the organization. It relies on input from various stakeholders. So who are the main players? 

Product Managers

I bet you saw this coming. As the custodian of product strategy and product vision, it’s no surprise that the PM will be deep in product research. 

They define what needs to be researched, prioritize research initiatives based on business goals, and ensure that the findings are integrated into the product roadmap. Product Managers act as the bridge between the user insights gathered from research and the development of the product.

Data Analysts

Data Analysts bring the power of numbers to the product research process. As a role within the Product Operations function, they analyze large datasets and tidy them all up so that Product Managers have clear data that they can act on and make decisions on. By identifying patterns, trends, and anomalies, they offer interesting insights into how users engage with the product.

Product Operations is a function normally reserved for larger businesses with multiple PMs, so this role tends to be seen in enterprise companies. If you’re a bit smaller, nine times out of ten,  PM will be doing data analysis themselves. 

Still, their work is essential for answering questions like: Which features are most used? Where do users drop off? What metrics signal success or failure? Data Analysts play a big role in making research data-driven and optimizing the Product Management process.  

How do I do product research well? 

Let’s explore the key principles of good product research. We don’t just want to tell you how to do it, we want to tell you how to do it well so you’ve got useful, actionable data and insight that can drive amazing results. 

Here are some product research best practices to help you nail this vital part of Product Management: 

1. Start with clear goals

Before diving into research, define your purpose. What are you trying to learn? Are you exploring new opportunities, validating an idea, or refining an existing product? This helps make sure that you’re using the right product research methods for what you’re trying to do.

As already explored, there are a lot of things you can learn with product research. Having clear objectives keeps you from getting lost in data and ensures your findings directly influence your product’s development.

2. Deeply understand your customers

Product research is customer-first, always. Be obsessive about your users when doing product research. Dive into their pain points and find out what keeps them up at night and what makes them excited about similar products.

The best way to find this stuff out is to ask them directly. Some PMs can try and be too clever and use other methods to learn about their customers. Engaging directly with users is the best way and will reveal what they value most, ensuring your product solves real problems. There’s no substitute for a customer interview or survey, so make use of these options in your product research.

3. Combine qualitative and quantitative research

It’s easy to fall into the trap of relying too much on numbers and data and quantitative stuff. Many PMs swear by this – but reality isn’t just spreadsheets and graphs, you need a touch of real life. 

That’s why it’s important to supplement quantitative research with qualitative research. This can give context to the numbers, and help build a clearer picture of what’s going on.

Confused between the two options? 

• Qualitative methods = interviews, focus groups, etc. Understanding user motivations, emotions, and behaviors.
• Quantitative methods = Metrics, A/B tests, analytics: Gathering statistically significant data to validate your hypotheses.

Sometimes what customers SAY and what they actually DO are different things. You shouldn’t rely on qualitative research alone for that reason. And, on the flip side, you cannot get a full understanding of motivations, emotional reactions, and frustrations from looking at the quantitative stuff alone. 

You need both together. Looking at both quantitative and qualitative product research provides a 360 view of your target audience and ensures you’re making decisions based on robust evidence.

4. Research relentlessly

Turn insights into action by testing your product ideas early and often. Start with small, low-stakes experiments, and just keep building, and testing throughout the lifecycle. Each bit of research you do is a step closer to the perfect product, so make sure you maintain the appetite for product testing at all times. 

You don’t do one bit of research and then base your entire product idea on that. You need to keep learning and keep checking to make sure you’re onto a winner. 

Research is Knowledge. Knowledge is Power.

At the heart of every great product is great product research. It’s what transforms ideas from hazy concepts into something tangible, meaningful, and valuable. Product research doesn’t just give you an answer – it gives you confidence that you are taking the right steps. Confidence that you’re prioritizing the right features, meeting your customers’ needs, and creating a roadmap grounded in reality, not guesswork.

At ProdPad, we understand the power of product research, which is why we’ve built tools to make it part of your everyday workflow. With features like customer feedback tracking, user persona creation, and our iconic Now-Next-Later roadmapping, ProdPad empowers you to ask the right questions, uncover actionable insights, and continuously improve. Product research isn’t one-and-done, and it isn’t something you do separately: it’s a long-term commitment tied to your Product Management process that helps you create a better product.

Try ProdPad and see how research-driven Product Management leads to stronger, more successful products.