Performance

Employee Spotlight: Tal Baron, Senior Product Manager

Post date 11/24/2020

Author YOTTAA Contributor

Meet Tal Baron, Senior Product Manager for YOTTAA. While always elbow deep in data and analytics, Tal dedicates his time to developing eCommerce insights to help brands better understand the impact site performance has on business outcomes. We interviewed Tal to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes:

What is your role at YOTTAA?

I am a Senior Product Manager, and I mostly focus on our Data and Analytics Products.

How does your work on eCommerce insights impact YOTTAA customers?

One of the projects I have been working on is what we call conversion insights. At YOTTAA, we help websites achieve better site performance. This new set of eCommerce insights is meant to help customers understand how site performance impacts business outcomes. Faster page load times create a better user experience, and fewer people get frustrated and leave the site. We help put data behind that kind of intuitive thought, and we help customers understand the impact site performance has on their conversion rate.

I have also been working on making our app available to Shopify users. A lot of Shopify sites are small/medium businesses, so we help these smaller companies also take advantage of this technology. It’s pretty cool to extend our capabilities to this audience and speed up sites across the ecosystem regardless of size.

What did you do before YOTTAA that has helped you most in your current role in developing eCommerce insights? How is your work at YOTTAA different from your previous jobs?

Before YOTTAA, I was a Product Manager in the energy space and working on analytics products. It was a different industry but the similar idea of being able to present information and insights to an audience so they can make better decisions to drive desired outcomes, In that case, improve energy-efficiency. At YOTTAA, it’s presenting data and eCommerce insights to help customers make better decisions about their website from a performance and security standpoint.

I was in the digital advertising space prior to that, which was more closely related to eCommerce in terms of driving traffic to sites, optimizing to improve conversion rate, and ultimately driving revenue.

That was my first opportunity as a Product Manager, and I learned how to build and manage software products. I worked on one project where we rebuilt one of our core applications from the ground up. I really enjoyed that as we delivered a better user experience for internal teams and self serve users of the platform. I’ve brought a lot of that experience into what I am doing here at YOTTAA with the Shopify integration in terms of making our products more intuitive for small/medium businesses.

What do you like about your work at YOTTAA?

The ability to tie what we do to business outcomes is pretty cool. As brands try out YOTTAA and see performance improvements, we can help decision makers understand how page load time impacts their business; it’s fun to present data to help those conversations and reassure them that they are making a good investment.

A lot of our interactions with our customers are with folks who are responsible for site performance for their eCommerce site. They have the tough job of managing technology and functionality demands from various directions while maintaining strong page load times. We help with this challenge in several ways; providing performance data on 3rd parties so they can make data-driven decisions on which services to add, and enabling customers to add more functionality while limiting the impact on page load time.

What has been your favorite project at YOTTAA? Do you have a favorite project you are most proud of?

I’ve only been here since April, so probably the conversion insights project. Our engineers are hard at work to productize this solution but we are able to expose these insights to many prospects and customers in the meantime. That’s where I’ve spent most of my time besides the Shopify project, which I also enjoy. I love the idea of helping small and medium businesses with something that without YOTTAA, would be much harder and time consuming to achieve. We give them an easy button for site optimization!

What brief advice do you have for others wanting to enter this profession?

I would say be data and analytics fluent. Don’t be intimidated by data; it’s the best asset for making sound decisions. Be curious and ask good questions, pursue that curiosity, and invest time looking for the answers. Also, measure the things that matter especially those related to your goals or your company’s goals. I’d recommend these to anyone trying to enter this profession or any other for that matter.

What makes YOTTAA a great place to work?

Working with smart people at YOTTAA, it’s an excellent opportunity to continue learning. In any job, I look for those opportunities where there is plenty of room for growth and learning on a daily basis. Secondly, it’s great to work with and help such a diverse set of customers, especially during these crazy times, where some eCommerce sites are trying to figure out their digital strategy a bit on the fly. It’s great to offer technology alongside our great services team and play the trusted advisor role in making the digital transition a little bit easier.

What do you do when you’re not at the office?

I am a huge Boston sports fan and grew up playing sports. Unfortunately I do not play as much as I once did, but I still enjoy going to games and I hope we can do that again soon. I love to travel with my wife and have southeast Asia on the radar as our next destination. Additionally, I happen to be a bit of a gamer and am trying to get my hands on a PS5 so if you have a connection, let me know! Also, I have two cats, shoutout to Marvin and Max!