Editor’s note:


This article was compiled by GrowingIO, a data analytics firm, from a linkedin post by Sarah Tavel, former head of product at Pinterest.


Original address:



www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-…



There are five core lessons I’ve learned from growing Pinterest from 5 employees to a team of 650. If your company is going through a period of rapid growth, there are bound to be a lot of gains, as well as inevitable mistakes. The best companies, like Pinterest, learn from their mistakes and adapt quickly to grow.

As the first product manager of Pinterest and the Leader of the later product research and development team, I have led overseas search, promotion, visual search and other businesses. This article is a summary of my learning and working experience in Pinterest.

First, “Measure what” is important

It is often said that without refined measurement there can be no progress. This is certainly true, but it misses the core strategy for choosing key measures. If the key metrics are wrong, chances are you’re wasting your time.

In the early days of Pinterest’s growth, the core metric set by our growth team was monthly active users. Monthly Active Users (MAU) is a common metric for many social products, and it’s a bit of an assumption to use it as our growth metric.

The growth team then created and advanced a product roadmap that drove a large number of new users to the top of the sign-up funnel. It was true that monthly active users (MAUs) were growing, but we also had problems with our user conversion funnel. The growth team spends a lot of time acquiring new users, and the product team focuses on increasing activity among existing users; However, no one is responsible for the Onborading process and retention of these new users to become active users as well. The result: a significant loss of new users.

Recognizing the problem, the team changed the core metric from monthly Active Users (MAU) to New Weekly Active Users (NWAU). For the record, Pinteret defines active users as users Posting new content on the site. After that, the growth team no longer focused on acquiring new sign-ups, but on providing hands-on guidance to those who had already signed up.

The change in this metric allowed the growth team to better match the product and users, and the number of weekly active users (WAU) continued to grow rapidly. That said, not only do we have to get people to sign up, but we also have to make sure they have a great experience from signing up to browsing to Posting content, so that people get long-term value on Pinterest.

This story illustrates the danger of vanity metrics, which can not only mislead the team, but can be a vicious cycle; As soon as you realize there is a problem with the metrics, make changes.

Second, scientific organizational structure is very important

Most implementation problems come down to one of two things: improper organizational structures or improper staffing. There is a lot of talk about “misstaffing”, but little attention is paid to organizational structure. In fact, many young companies are committed to “flattening” their organizations, reducing their hierarchies, or letting them form naturally. However, this approach often results in very mediocre execution.

Two examples:

In the early days of Pinterest, our organization was matrix structured, which meant that no one team had all the resources needed to get a product online. In product development teams like mine, most of them are supported by back-end engineers. When we want to release a new feature, I have to ask the mobile team to prioritize my requirements and let the next front-end engineer with time to set my schedule. So that our back-end engineers and designers are ready when the front-end engineers are available; When I was desperate, I even did a Gantt chart to sort out the whole project flow!

It’s hard to get a good product out quickly.

When we switched to a full stack queue, everything became much faster. We can set our schedule according to the product priorities and launch better products; It also makes it easier for everyone on the team to work.

In the second example, there was a period of time when the growth team reported to the marketing team, which resulted in a lot of time spent on communication and coordination. People on the growth team are constantly meeting with the product team to make sure their strategy is aligned with the product roadmap. We spent a lot of time in meetings, but it was still very difficult to identify priorities.

We streamlined our strategy so that the growth team reported to the product team and aligned everyone’s work better with the product roadmap, which eliminated a lot of unnecessary meetings.

Changing organizational structures is often painful and a distraction from core work; But as the company grows to the next level, this process is absolutely necessary. When an organizational structure fails to adapt to your execution strategy, it can become an additional obstacle to growth.

Sometimes be brave enough to ignore the loudest users

When you launch a feature that some users don’t like, they complain. Some users even make requests on Facebook when they have a need: we call these users “loudest users.” These users are both a blessing and a curse to the product. Because without them, you wouldn’t have the company you have; But in order to reach the next million users, sometimes you need to ignore their opinions.

“Loudest users” does not represent all users, and definitely not future users. They are your most active users, the ones who know your product best right now.

But this creates two illusions or illusions:

  • They’re used to the current product, so they don’t want it to iterate.

  • They will inevitably require you to add new features, which will add complexity to the product.

These two delusions can lead you in the wrong direction and cost you dearly, and good companies know they have to choose between the two if they want to grow more. Let me illustrate two cases of Facebook and Pinterest.

Illusion 1: Users don’t want to change their habits

When Facebook first launched its news channel in 2006, there was a huge backlash. Many angry users threatened to boycott Facebook and even created A Facebook group to protest the feature. But over time, the product became a core feature of Facebook.

Facebook might not be the same if it had let a few vocal users decide what works best. In the end, Facebook proved itself right; They ignored the opposition of the minority and stuck to their strategy.

It takes courage to make these changes! You don’t want to excite existing loyal users, but you also need to acquire the next million, and the scary thing is that they don’t know what they want. The key here is what the data is telling you, we need to actively communicate with users, if the data is telling you the new direction is right, then ignore the vocal minority. Because most of the time, these vocal minorities are just the tip of the iceberg.

Illusion 2: Complex product features

If you roll out every feature that existing users ask for, you end up with a highly engaged but very small user base.

Deep users will demand increased complexity, but this can be detrimental to the retention of new users. I’ve found that sometimes the extra complexity is worth it, but most of the time it isn’t. Whenever a feature is introduced that existing users need most, it is always used by less than 5% of users; So you need to think about whether you really need to change the rules of the game for those less than 5% of your audience.

Remember: It’s easier to add features than to cut them off! Another problem is that users often demand features that solve small convenience problems rather than real solutions.

When I was at Pinterest, one of the most sought-after features was the ability to arrange your palette according to your needs. You can imagine a user usage scenario: they need to scroll down to the bottom of the artboard to find their favorite one. Rearrangement is a pain point, but definitely not the best solution; This feature is only used by a very small number of deep users, and when you dig into the requirement, the fundamental pain point is that it is hard to find the sketchpad you need.

Product managers should not just optimize functionality for users, but provide the right scalable solution that addresses the pain points of most users. In this case, we developed a “personal search” feature; Because more users will use the search function to solve the lookup problem, rather than rearranging their kanban.

Finally, don’t forget the resources consumed by optimizing the functionality. Especially if you’re in a startup with less resources, you need to do a better job of balancing the pros and cons; Either increase engagement with existing users or increase the growth of new users.

Not only does it need to be a smart growth hacker to acquire a large number of new users, it also needs to make the Onboarding process easier, provide more use cases, and increase the conversion rate of new users to retained users. Once the product reaches a certain stage and builds enough engagement, you have to figure out how to get the next 100 million users, even if it makes existing users uncomfortable.

Iv. Maintain users’ trust in banks: avoid spending more than you earn

Trust is like a bank. You expect to have more money in the bank than you take out. I’ve heard a product theory before that five positive experiences make up for one negative experience. As you can see, the exchange rate for this conversion is very expensive in the bank that the user trusts.

This mindset has made me more careful about the user experience, and I think it’s why Pinterest has become one of the best consumer brands in America in a short period of time. (Note: Prophet recently included Pinterest in its top 10 U.S. brands ahead of Nike and Apple)

We put a lot of money in the bank of trust with a good product experience, but that’s not the only way to put money. We also earn our customers’ trust by providing them with backups, a customer service team to deal with underlying issues, and a timely reminder of product updates. When you have enough money in a trusted bank, users will give you a certain amount of forgiveness. Whether you make a tiny mistake or when you try something new.

In the early days of Pinterest’s rapid expansion, the site sometimes crashed. Engineers worked to get the site back up quickly and provide users with backups of files in a timely manner. Everyone in our marketing team posted updates on Pinterest’s progress on Facebook and Twitter, and worked hard to recall every user. Users will greatly appreciate our efforts and further enhance their trust in our products.

Face up to difficulties and proceed straight ahead

Every company has periods of stagnant growth and low morale. Even For Facebook, there are times when it stops moving forward.

Until the summer of 2012, Facebook was our primary source of content for Pinterest. Then Facebook bought Instagram; Facebook shut down our publishing interface on Facebook because of competition.

Slowing growth is terrible for any company, but it’s also the perfect time for self-doubt and self-reflection. Have we reached a growth plateau? Should we be more like Instagram? Finally, we stuck to our position, the growth team stuck to the original development path, developed a new distribution strategy, and finally, Pinterest’s growth accelerated again.

When organizations start to doubt themselves, leaders stick to their principles. Keep in mind that there are days, months and even quarters of trouble, even for the almighty Facebook. As long as you focus on the core strategy and the strategy is appropriate, you can break through by executing that strategy.

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