Pick a product – Sephora Mobile app

What are the goals of the product –

Sephora is a retailer that sells personal care products such as skincare, beauty, hair, and makeup. They have physical stores as well as a strong e-commerce presence in the form of a website and mobile app. For this exercise, I will focus on the Mobile app. The mobile app enables users to browse the products on the device of their choice with comfort being “mobile”, purchase the products, read/submit reviews, get notifications.

The app is designed with the following goals in mind ( in priority order)

Increase Revenue

The mobile app is designed to provide the best experience from browsing to checkout so that users don’t have to move to the web browser to complete their purchase.

Users can opt to get notified when out of stock items are back, so that they can complete the purchase.

Reward system, that encourages users to buy more items, increasing revenue for the company.

User engagement – increase the time users spend browsing through the content available for purchase, make users aware of the items they did not know they needed, and get notifications (back-in-stock items, new items, sale, etc)

Social network, Sephora has built a huge network of online influences that try new products and provide reviews, and routines to other users on the App, you can subscribe to the topics of your interest and receive information on the products that will help improve your specific situation.

User retention – there are other competitors such as MAC, ULTA, Macy’s, and Nordstrom that offer similar product lines, hence it is important to track user retention, and churn.

Reward system and information on the “clean” products work towards the goal of making this product loved by the users. These features make the app useful and easy to use.

What will you include in the monthly business review deck for the leadership?

It is important to present both quantitative and qualitative metrics of the business when performing the review of the health of the business

Quantitative metrics: Dashboards and reports that showcase DAU, WAU and MAU. % growth in new users month over month, avg number of times user visits the app every month, avg time user spends browsing on the app, avg $ user spends on purchase. The number of bug fixes in the past month and overall app performance spec., % growth in these areas YoY as well as at monthly cadence.

Qualitative metrics:

Upcoming product enhancement plan, goals and blockers.

summarize feedback from different user groups such as influences, users, suppliers, and app store. Are there any major issues that are not being tracked otherwise?

Feedback from the marketing team to understand how well the latest marketing campaign performed and how well did the mobile app handle the spike. How is the app performing in the full picture of the Sephora business (store, web-based, app).