Hacking Mobility: Lessons from 1-800-Flowers.com
Amit ShahVice President of Mobile and Social
Media1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.
Quick History• Long historical context with analog machines in general but first originated within the digital and computing context at MIT in the 1950’s
• Documented in Steven’s Levy’s classic book “Hackers”
• Follows the story of the MIT model railroad club members who first used the term ‘hack’ to describe a clever way of improving electronic systems
Hack
Improve and make things better
Hacking Culture - Context• Hacking means different things to different people
• Many interpretations and sub-cultures associated with hacking: social change, freedom of information, systems security, coding marathons, etc.
• Hacking culture is now adopted as a mainstream philosophy within technology development and especially within start-ups
Hacking Mobility - Context
• Mobile was born and is growing up in this cultural context of hacking as a mainstream philosophy
• Hacking Mobility is NOT about computer hacking, illegal activity, malicious access, etc.
• Hacking Mobility is also NOT about code changes
Hacking Mobility - Context
• Hacking Mobility addresses the evolution of mobile to mobility
• Mobility challenges all stakeholders in the mobile ecosystem to be supremely expreience centric
• But this evolution is not easy – it’s disruptive to how brands and agencies are structured and how they operate
• Hacking Mobility provides a potential framework to meet this diruptive challenge
Hacking Mobility
Transforming contextual mobility challenges into powerful opportunities for engaging customers
1Move Quickly
2Be Iterative
3Continuously test user context
4Build open team culture
Hacking Mobility: Core Lessons
Hackathon
A focussed, intensive and collaborative exercise to make things better
Hacking Mobility – Experience Hackathons
• Hackathons are commonly understood to be intensive coding sessions with a focus on a defined end state - for e.g., build a new functionality, release a new version, fix critical issues, etc.
• We use Hackathons at 1800Flowers across the mobility experience – technology, design, marketing etc. which may or may not involve any code change
• Not an easy task internally – deep skepticism, resource challenges, cross-channel pushbacks…
Experience Hackathon
A focussed, intensive and collaborative exercise to make things any experience better
Hacking Mobility – Experience Hackathons
• Currently once every two weeks focussed on a particular element constituting the user journey; once every other day during peak (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day)
• Cross-functional internal team (marketing, operations, IT, CS, mobile) + external partners as required
• Open, democratic hackathon team culture – no hiearchies, no sacred cows and success/failure is everyone’s responsibility
• Outcomes are measured and distributed across the company for feedback
• Removed bloated tags and hidden images
• Reduced total number of requests from 59 to 24
• Changed all category URLS to be absolutized
• These improvements significantly improved the app homepage load time as well– Important win for first
impressions of new users
• Decreased Full Page Load time by 34%
Dom C
onte
nt Loa
d
Full
Page
Loa
d0
3
6
9
Load Times on 3G network
BeforeAfter
Tim
e (
sec)
34%
Im
prov
emen
t
21%
Impr
ovem
ent
Experience Hackathons: Technology Focus
Original Flow:
Select Date on Calendar
Tap “Add to Cart” button
Land on Cart Page
Tap on “Order Now”
Land on Shipping
Info Page
Valentines Day Improved Flow:
Select Date on Calendar
Land on Cart Page
Tap on “Order Now”
Land on Shipping Info Page
Mother’s Day Optimized Flow:
Select Date on Calendar
Land on Shipping Info Page
Experience Hackathons: Optimization Focus
Experience Hackathons: Design Focus - Input
Experience Hackathons: Design Focus – Auto correct
Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus
1 week out 2 days out
Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus
Mother’s Day 1 Day After
Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus
Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus
Hacking Mobility: Early Results
• Pre Christmas: Baseline
• Post Christmas: 6.5% over baseline
• V-day: 9.9% over baseline
• Post V-Day: 13.3% over baseline
• M-Day: 20.4% over baseline
• AOV: 12.9% over baseline
• Frequency: 14% over baseline
Most important hack = Cold Beer
