Clarifying questions:

Considerations to make before sunsetting a product:

1. I would understand the goals in mind when the product ideation/development happened.
2. I would like to compare how the current product features match the goals and perform a gap analysis.
3. I would like to compare how the market/users are reacting to the product based on qualitative analysis that shows customer feedback, sales and customer success feedback.
4. I would like to take a step back and evaluate how the product performance is being measuered.

For each of the metric category that I mentioned below, I would take a deep dive and evaluate whether there are any possible enhancements in any steps if the funnel to help improve the health of the product and measure the performance metric over a 6-12 month period

Product performance metrics-

1. Adoption – I will look into how well accepted this product is based on specific criteria such as daily/weekly/Monthly new sign ups, how well the targetted user group is responding to the marketing initiatives, customer acquisition initiatives. Look into market share by comparing how the competing products are performing.
2. Retention/Engagement – User retention and ongoing user engagement with the product is crucial in any product’s success. Hence looking into metrics that show user retention such as % growth in # of users over time (D/W/M/YoY),  User engagement also shows whether the end user love this product or not. Hence I will look into DAU, WAU, MAU, Avg time a user spends using the product, Avg # of visits by user D/W/M, % change in these engagement metrics.
3. Monetization – It is important to know how much revenue a product is generating, it wouldn’t make sence to work on a product that is not profitable over a period of time. For monetization, I will look into avg revenue per user, avg revenue per paying user(if the product has a paid subscription) avg revenue per daily active user and lifetime value.

Assuming all the above indicates that the product is not a viable solution and must shut down, I will propose a plan to sunset the product that includes-

1. Establish a process for ongoing support and migration plan for existing customers if applicable
2. Communicate to the leadership with the gap analysis, measures taken to salvage the product at each step with quantitative and qualitative data.

I assume that the product is already launched with an MVP.

I would start by revisiting the below things first:

1. What is the purpose of the product?

2. What user groups is it targeting?

3. At what stage is the product in?

—Are we trying to get the product market fit?

—Are we trying to make profits or increase revenue?

—Are we trying to increase the market share?

I would then look at the metric(s) that indicate the product is underperforming, and brainstorm on below scenarios with cross-fuctional teams:

1. Are the metric(s) correctly indicative of the goal of the product (i.e. product market fit or profit/revenue increase or increase in market share)?

2. Do we need to fine-tune or change the metrics?

3. Are the pricing strategies correct? The metrics might be correct but users might resort to substitues or competitors for better pricing

3. Check at what point in the user funnel is the product lacking:

–lack of awareness/adoption- check with the product marketing team if we need to improvise on the PR

–lacks of engagement- check at which particular step are the users opting out (for digital products -check for performance issues e.g. page load time, response time, buffering time etc.)

–lack of conversion – check methods of payment, integration with the payment gateway provider

Next steps:

1. Make changes to the metrics and/or pricing strategy depending on the findings and the product goal, and monitor the product performance for next 6 months

2. If findings indicate that the metrics & pricing are optimized but the product lacks in one of the steps in user journey, will suggest changes accordingly-

–for awareness/adoption: work with PR team to make changes to the marketing strategy

–for engagement- fix any technical issues and/or improve UX based on the findings. Perform A/B testing in the beta environment for UX changes using a good sample of user segment

–for conversion- fix any issues in payment gateway integration, suggest perks such as free 30 day trial period or money back guarantee for the users to go ahead and confidently convert

–for a digital product, create a short survey on the landing page for the users to provide their feedback

Make the above changes and check for the performance improvement for the next 6 months. The senior management and stakeholders will be communicated on an ongoing basis about the above plan and bi-weekly progress for the period of next 6-months. If the metrics still do not improvise or if we are unable to pivot the product further (due to lack of sufficient resources, budget, capital, changed user needs etc.), the stakeholders will be informed accordingly that the product needs to be sunset summarizing:

1. All the measures taken to pivot the product and make it vaulable

2. Why pivoting the product further wouldn’t make sense anymore and constraints involved in doing so