I will approach this question by following the Structure: Describe the Company/Feature, Goal, User Journey, Dashboard Metrics

Clarification

• A cart is a Place where we add the items that we want to buy. In this Question do we have to focus on from the Time when the Item is added to the cart till the time Item is checked out from the Cart?
• I am assuming that we are covering web and windows workflow for the Cart?
• I am Assuming that we are focusing on Global or do we have a Particular Geography in Mind? I am assuming Global.

Description

Amazon wants to become a One-Stop shop or Market place for the world. Their Vision is to build a Place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

The Purpose of the cart is to act as a Basket or Central place where the User can add all the items that he wants to buy. The user can add items from different categories into the cart and at last make a payment for all the Items in 1 Go.

Goal

We have to create a Dashboard so I will try and Look for some Primary metrics and some secondary metrics to which Users can zoom in. My focus will be on Customer Engagement while I will also cover some metrics from Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, revenue, retention, and referral

Customer Journey

1. Users Look for the item that they want to buy on the Amazon website
2. For the Ones that he wants to buy, he checks the details and Clicks on Add to Cart.
3. The Items are added to the cart.
4. Now when the Items are already in the cart, he can see the list of Items’ names in the Cart, Quantity, Price, and option to Buy(which will take the user to the Payment page). Users can also remove the item from the Cart.
5. User clicks on Proceed to Buy

Metrics

Awareness

• Number of Users hovering over the Add to cart
• Number of clicks to reach the Cart

Acquisition

• Number of clicks on the add to cart button[Daily, weekly, Monthly]
  • Number of first time Add to Cart users

Activation

• Number of Users who added more than 5 items in the cart
• Number of Users finishing first checkout from the cart

Customer engagement

• Average Cart size per day
• # of Items added to the Cart per day
• Number of Distinct User Orders Completed(added to the Cart and Payments made)
• Number of Items Dropped from the cart
• number of Cart Drops. I mean the user added the items but did not buy any item
  • Number of users who clicked on the checkout but did not finish Payment
  • Number of Users who did not even click on the checkout
• The average duration of Items in the Cart.

Revenue

Total revenue from adding the Cart[Per Day, Week, Month]

• The average revenue per cart
• Max Cart Value
• Min Cart Value

Retention

Number of Customers making more than 3 purchases per week, month

Primary Metric will be

• Number of cart successful checkouts
• total revenue on the cart

Clarifying questions:

• Are we trying to measure success for both web & app? (Yes)
• Are we also looking for the funnel before the add to cart functionality and also after? No
• Is there any specific geography that we are targeting? No
• Amazon has multiple categories/ sub categories any specific thing that we are targeting? No
• How are we defining success for the add to cart feature? (users converting through the funnel / ultimately redirecting them to the checkout / payment page and also users adding product to the cart.

Goal:

Amazon is an e-commerce marketplace which enables users to browse and purchase products across category. Like any ecommerce store Amazon’s main objective is to:

• facilitate online shopping
• increase its revenue/ user base

The goal of “Add to Cart” functionality should be aligned with these end goals.

So our metrics should be such that the users:

• are able to buy / go ahead in the funnel/ not churn
• ensure that our revenue metrics are on track

Actions:

What are the core actions that a user can perform on Add to Cart?

• Add products from the catalog page to the cart
• Add products from the PDP page to the cart
• Add wishlisted / Saved for later items to the cart
• Add products from the recommended list (frequently bought, Items for you) to the cart
• Make variation (add items/ remove items) on the cart page due to various reasons (change of mind, not eligible for free delivery (realise it on payment page), out of stock/ inventory gone etc.)
• Proceed to pay

Metrics:

We will define two northstar metrics for this dashboard which align with the goal of Amazon and then define a couple of supporting metrics:

• Average Order Value (filters basis categories/ sub-categories/ new users & old users/ core users & power users/ basis geography)
• No. of items per order (filters basis categories/ sub-categories/ new users & old users/ core users & power users/ basis geography)

Supporting Metrics:

• Cart additions from catalog page
• Cart additions from PDP page
• Cart additions from saved for later & recommended lists
• people churning from the cart page
• CTR of the cart abandoned push notifications that we send
• people returning via resurrection campaigns and then converting in the funnel
• Average number of updations of cart value per order
• people clicking on “Proceed to pay” vs # people landing on cart page

Evaluate:

We should track all these metrics basis different filters like categories/ sub-categories/ new users & old users/ core users & power users/ basis geography which would give us a clearer picture. Numbers won’t really make any sense if we cannot fine tune our data further.

We should also look at the metrics beyond cart page and try and understand user behaviour on the payment page and how that might be impacting our cart page metrics.

For eg: people might come across an offer on the payment page (bank offer/ category specific etc.) and might decide to come back and increase the number of items with which they are checking out etc.

We should also do heat mapping on the cart page to understand whether any part of the cart page is causing trouble / confusion to the end user.

A plan for addressing this metrics question in a product manager interview.

Clarifying questions: 

Does the remit of this include the overall cart experience from “Add to Cart” button to different instances of cart available throughout Amazon.com journey – assume yes

Does the remit include all channels – web, mobile, any other channel? Assume web and mobile

Before solutioning this, I want to lay out Amazon’s mission and goals so metrics for Cart can be drawn from there.

Purpose the cart serves:

It allows customers to save everything they want to purchase in one place, review high level descriptions, prices, edit orders, save for later, add gift messaging before finalizing order. It serves as a key step before customers move on to complete purchase.

Customer Journey: 

Customer searches for item or is advertized items (multiple sources) > customer lands on Product Details page to view description > views Adds to Cart > reviews items in cart, edits, saves for later > proceeds to purchase.

Dashboards: 

• Summary dashboard for top line goal metrics, counter metrics
• Dashboard for Awareness (top of funnel)
• Dashboard for Conversion Metrics
• Dashboard for Customer Engagement & Retention Metrics
• Dashboard for Revenue Metrics

• # of Impressions for Add to Cart Button per Day (Awareness) X
• % Clicking the Button Per Day (Conversion) X
• Avg # Items Added to Cart Per User Per Day (Engagement/Retention) X
• % of items Checked Out from Cart (Engagement/Retention)

• Cart Abandonment Rate
• Remove Rate (Rate at which items are removed from cart)
• Idle Time in Cart (before a purchase is made)