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Imagine you are the head of Product at AirBnb. What are the top 2-3 metrics you would monitor?

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Answers (2)

Clarification Questions:

  1. AirBnB, although a single app, has multiple businesses. Are we talking about their reservations/bookings business or events business? – Let’s consider the reservations business
  2. Do you want me to look at both the supply side metrics and demand side metrics? – for time, we can go ahead with just the demand side.
Response
Briefly talking about Airbnb – Airbnb is a two-sided marketplace that matches hosts with guests using their web and mobile apps. So, here we have two key user personas to target. Guests, who are booking reservations and Hosts, who are providing the accommodations.
We will look at the Airbnb journey from the perspective of both the users. In of the metrics, I will consider what is the action that a guest is performing, and what are metrics we could use to quantify the actions. For each of the metrics, I will evaluate its relevance to AirBnB’s business and the actionability of the metric. The ones with high relevance and high actionability will be the metrics to track.
  • Guest –
    • Pre-booking
      • Comes onto AirBnB
        • # of users coming onto the platform from various channels
          • Relevance to Business – High
          • Actionable – High
      • Searches for a certain location and applies the dates
        • # of searches run – Tells us how many times are people trying to find something
          • Relevance to Business – Medium
          • Actionable – Medium
        • Average # of bookings found per search – This will tell which locations are trending and how much variety the company is able to provide to the user. The better the variety, the likelier that a user will find a stay. It also helps balance the supply and demand per location. 
          • Relevance to Business – High
          • Actionable – High 
        • # of zero result searches – Helps us identify which locations users are traveling to, but AirBnB doesn’t provide results. Alternatively, it also tells us what combination of filters have zero results
          • Relevance to Business – Medium
          • Actionable – High
      • Browses through the options
        • # of clicks per session – Tells us how many stays a users needs to look through before they make a booking
          • Relevance to Business – Medium
          • Actionable – Low
      • Finds one that he/she likes
        • # of options liked – Helps make a
      • Makes a booking
        • % of users making a reservation – Tells us if users are overall satisfied with the health of the marketplace. 
          • Relevance to Business – High 
          • Actionable – High
        • Number of bounces at various stages
    • On days of the booking
      • Is able to get into the apartment or location with easy
        • # of guests not able to find the apartment
      • Has no issues with the stay
        • # of complaints raised during stay
    • Post-booking
      • Has an overall positive experience
        • Rating spread for the experience – easily identify the best stays from the rest, take action on the poor ones
          • Relevance to Business – High
          • Actionable – High
        • NPS
Key Metrics I would look at as Head of Product at AirBnB
  1. Average # of results found per search (this metric disaggregated by top searches and geographies)
  2. % of customers making a reservation (this metric disaggregated by the median time taken and geography to identify the health of the marketplace)
  3. Rolling Rating of the customers who provide for the stays (high quality stays give us more returning customers)

Clarify:

  • Airbnb has mutiple revenue lines with primary lines being Airbnb bookings and events? Which one would you like me to focus upon? IVR: You choose
  • Is there particular geography that you want me to focus upon? IVR: Global
  • Is there a particular user segment in mind? IVR: You choose
  • Is there a specific quarterly/annual goal that i need to aware off?  IVR: You are the head of product, so you decide
Airbnb mission is to provide an affordable home like experiences to travellers. It is a two sided marketplace connecting hosts and guests with the trust of Airbnb. Hosts list their properties for stays and guests make a reservation for these stays through airbnb portal.
I would like to focus on Airbnb bookings because it is the biggest revenue line and resonates very well with Airbnb’s core mission.
Approach: I would start with the user groups, journey and then look at the potential metrics. Does that sound good? IVR: Fine
User Groups: Being a two-sided marketplace, Airbnb has both supply and demand side.
  • Supply Side – Hosts: These are the people and businesses who list their properties on the Airbnb portal for short/long term stays.
  • Demand Side – Guests: These are the people who search for stays on airbnb, and potentially reserve the place for duration of their stay.
I would like to focus on the demand side because it dictates the overall health of AirBnb.
User Journey of a Guest:
  1. Go to Airbnb (New user/existing)
  2. Does the login (signup)/federated
  3. Punches in the address of the neighbourhood/city where they are planning to travel/stay
  4. Punches in the dates that they plan to stay
  5. Looks through the results
  6. Factors that contribute
    1. Location (neighbourhood and approximate distance from the search address)
    2. Pictures
    3. Reviews
    4. Time since Host has been on Airbnb
    5. Pricing
    6. Amenities
    7. conditions and Cancellation policy of the host
  7. Send questions to the host(optional)
  8. Selects the place and request to book
    1. Punches in payment detail
    2. Host authorizes the guest to reserve post questions and guest reserves it
    3. Host approves the Guest’s request
  9. Guest stays at the property
  10. Guest reviews the Host at end of stay
  11. Host reviews Guest at end of stay
Metrics:
  • Awareness:
    • How are channels doing to cultivate awareness about AirBnb. This would more important in countries where AIrbnb is not there yet or has recently launched
    • Organic
    • Inorganic (SEO, influencers/blogs)
  • Acquisition
    • % of users who have registered on Airbnb
    • Bounce rate
  • Activation
    • % of users conducted searched for stays and at least made one booking
    • % of users who searched but did not get any results (no supply or all booked)
  • Engagement
    • # and % growth of searches  on the platform (D/W/M)
    • #/% of searches that resulted into a booking (D/W/M)
    • booking/(address search) ratio
    • Average time from search to booking
    • Total # of days booked per D/W/M
    • # of days booked/# of available slots – this would tell us occupancy utilization via Airbnb
  • Revenue
    • Total $/% growth value of bookings (D/W/M)
    • ARP User/Host
    • LTV/CAC
  • Retention
    • Frequency of bookings per user (D/W/M)
    • churn rate
    • %/% of bookings cancelled
    • Average rating (app/experiences)
I would focus on these metrics across demographics because they have the highest impact and demonstrate the overall product health of the Airbnb platform:
  • #/% of searches that resulted into a booking (D/W/M)
  • # of days booked/# of available slots – this would tell us occupancy utilization via Airbnb
  • Total $/% growth value of bookings (D/W/M)
Other than these product metrics, I would also look at the operational metrics such as login time, errors(server/client), % up time.