Hacking Mobility: Lessons from 1-800-Flowers.com

Amit ShahVice President of Mobile and Social

Media1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.

Quick History• Long historical context with analog machines in general but first originated within the digital and computing context at MIT in the 1950’s

• Documented in Steven’s Levy’s classic book “Hackers”

• Follows the story of the MIT model railroad club members who first used the term ‘hack’ to describe a clever way of improving electronic systems

Hack

Improve and make things better

Hacking Culture - Context• Hacking means different things to different people

• Many interpretations and sub-cultures associated with hacking: social change, freedom of information, systems security, coding marathons, etc.

• Hacking culture is now adopted as a mainstream philosophy within technology development and especially within start-ups

Hacking Mobility - Context

• Mobile was born and is growing up in this cultural context of hacking as a mainstream philosophy

• Hacking Mobility is NOT about computer hacking, illegal activity, malicious access, etc.

• Hacking Mobility is also NOT about code changes

Hacking Mobility - Context

• Hacking Mobility addresses the evolution of mobile to mobility

• Mobility challenges all stakeholders in the mobile ecosystem to be supremely expreience centric

• But this evolution is not easy – it’s disruptive to how brands and agencies are structured and how they operate

• Hacking Mobility provides a potential framework to meet this diruptive challenge

Hacking Mobility

Transforming contextual mobility challenges into powerful opportunities for engaging customers

1Move Quickly

2Be Iterative

3Continuously test user context

4Build open team culture

Hacking Mobility: Core Lessons

Hackathon

A focussed, intensive and collaborative exercise to make things better

Hacking Mobility – Experience Hackathons

• Hackathons are commonly understood to be intensive coding sessions with a focus on a defined end state - for e.g., build a new functionality, release a new version, fix critical issues, etc.

• We use Hackathons at 1800Flowers across the mobility experience – technology, design, marketing etc. which may or may not involve any code change

• Not an easy task internally – deep skepticism, resource challenges, cross-channel pushbacks…

Experience Hackathon

A focussed, intensive and collaborative exercise to make things any experience better

Hacking Mobility – Experience Hackathons

• Currently once every two weeks focussed on a particular element constituting the user journey; once every other day during peak (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day)

• Cross-functional internal team (marketing, operations, IT, CS, mobile) + external partners as required

• Open, democratic hackathon team culture – no hiearchies, no sacred cows and success/failure is everyone’s responsibility

• Outcomes are measured and distributed across the company for feedback

• Removed bloated tags and hidden images

• Reduced total number of requests from 59 to 24

• Changed all category URLS to be absolutized

• These improvements significantly improved the app homepage load time as well– Important win for first

impressions of new users

• Decreased Full Page Load time by 34%

Dom C

onte

nt Loa

d

Full

Page

Loa

d0

3

6

9

Load Times on 3G network

BeforeAfter

Tim

e (

sec)

34%

Im

prov

emen

t

21%

Impr

ovem

ent

Experience Hackathons: Technology Focus

Original Flow:

Select Date on Calendar

Tap “Add to Cart” button

Land on Cart Page

Tap on “Order Now”

Land on Shipping

Info Page

Valentines Day Improved Flow:

Select Date on Calendar

Land on Cart Page

Tap on “Order Now”

Land on Shipping Info Page

Mother’s Day Optimized Flow:

Select Date on Calendar

Land on Shipping Info Page

Experience Hackathons: Optimization Focus

Experience Hackathons: Design Focus - Input

Experience Hackathons: Design Focus – Auto correct

Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus

1 week out 2 days out

Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus

Mother’s Day 1 Day After

Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus

Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus

Hacking Mobility: Early Results

• Pre Christmas: Baseline

• Post Christmas: 6.5% over baseline

• V-day: 9.9% over baseline

• Post V-Day: 13.3% over baseline

• M-Day: 20.4% over baseline

• AOV: 12.9% over baseline

• Frequency: 14% over baseline

Most important hack = Cold Beer

Hacktastic Thank You!

Contact:ashah@1800flowers.com516-237-4189