Product management analytics tools and understanding

I was preparing someone close a few days ago for a product management interview and was asked how does analytics play into the mindset of a PM. I did some research and found the details below, hoping it will help some of you. 

• Analytics is a useful aid in understanding user and customer behavior. 
• Analytics is a tool that is used for the measurement of product progress. 
• Analytics is used in order to prove product ideas' viability. ...
• Analytics enables making informed product decisions.

• https://www.cleverism.com/product-management-role-analytics/ The general purpose of business analytics is to study past performance in order to gain valuable insights into the current state of the company and make decisions based on historical data. In product management, the goal is basically the same, although the application of analytics is more precise.Analytics used in product management measures the current state of the product, and how the customers or users are doing with it. For it to properly qualify as analytics, it must involve a series of measurements, since the analysis cannot be done on a single measurement alone.
  Let us say that the business has a wealth of data generated. However, it has poor analytic tools. This means that all that data will be rendered useless since the management cannot act on the wealth of information that it has. Therefore, it is not enough to have the data on hand; what you do with the data afterward is the real game-changer.
• https://www.cleverism.com/3-questions-amazon-ceo-asks-before-hiring-anyone/ strategic conversations preamble. How perspective on how employers "should" walk away thinking about you at the end of the interview
• 5 Top Analytics Tools That Are Product Managers’ Best Friend   An overview of some of the most popular product management analytics tools that SaaS product managers use to improve efficiency, output, and customer experience.
• https://towardsdatascience.com/becoming-a-data-driven-product-manager-f320d0182a9c  The core principles you should focus on as a product manager revolves around 
  1. product usage, 
  2. customer-centric design (especially user experience), 
  3. competitive offerings, 
  4. pricing, 
  5. market share 
  6. industry trends. If the advice you receive doesn’t help you use your data to successfully find answers for those pieces of your job function, simply ignore the advice.
• Essential Tools For Data-Driven Product Management  Product analytics tools help product teams within organizations better understand how well they're serving their online users or customers. These tools primarily analyze user behavior and report on engagement with software and web applications. In this way, these tools help businesses uncover conversion blockers, where users tend to drop-off within certain funnels or activity-flows, and identify where their users or customers are coming from on the web.
  1. Mindmapping: For organizing concepts in related groupings at the beginning of the ideation process
  2. Flowcharts & Diagrams: For doing high-level process mapping and rough sketching user onboarding and experience
  3. User Research: For doing qualitative and quantitative research on users and personas to validate concepts
  4. Roadmapping: For organizing and prioritizing product roadmaps, strategy, and releases
  5. Wireframing: For creating low-fidelity product mockups prior to visual design
  6. User Onboarding: For guiding your customers in real-time through the features and functions in your software
  7. Prototyping: For creating high-fidelity product prototypes after designing but prior to writing code
  8. Usability Testing: Forgetting and analyzing user feedback on prototypes and pre-release versions
  9. Agile Project Management: For managing an active product management process in an agile workflow
  10. A/B Testing: For testing different versions of features and copy to optimize your product
  11. Heatmapping & Session Recording: For recording and analyzing individual user sessions and clicking/scrolling
  12. Analytics: For analyzing and optimizing your full customer journey – the most critical part of the process