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Pinterest Pin Sharing Drop Investigation

Root Cause Analysis · beginner

Pinterest recently launched a new update to its mobile app that was supposed to improve the user interface. Instead, it seems to have caused a 15% decrease in pin sharing among users. You must diagnose the root cause of this decline. Focus on identifying the specific aspects of the update that could have led to this decrease. Do not propose any solutions yet.

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Community approaches

LearnProduct’s approach

  1. First analyse the user flow of the new UI update and check for the placement of share pin button.
  2. Validating the share rate between both the UI
  3. Checking the point of drop off rate in the UI
  4. Checking the post view rate
  5. Hypothesing the UI change in the pin share button causing the drop in the pin share rate
  6. Discoverability: the share button is less visible or moved behind an overflow menu, so fewer users find it (drop concentrated at the entry-point step).
  7. Added friction: the new share flow requires more taps or a new confirmation, so users start but don't complete (drop at the share-sheet step).
  8. Competing prominence: save/react/comment got more visually dominant, cannibalizing share taps.
  9. Recognition: icon or label changed and users no longer identify it as share.
  10. Instrumentation: the share event is under-logged post-update, so the "decline" is partly measurement.
  11. Upstream shift: the redesign changed the feed so users see fewer highly shareable pins.

Yuvraj’s approach

Identify potential causes linked to the UI update.: -The UI update in the app has caused resistance/friction for the existing users that were used to the old UI before the update was rolled out. This can be related to new pin sharing icon, button location change or navigation change. After the UI update, the pin sharing button is hidden deep and takes a few extra steps to reach. This can cause a decline in the sharing feature. -The pin sharing flow is broken or has some errors after the UI update was rolled out and skipped essential end to end testing. -The pin sharing is now available after the user logs in whereas earlier it was available for both logged in and logged out users. -External factors like competitor rolling out similar kind of feature and oulling engagement from our users.

Validate the metric or data showing the decrease.: -Avg pin sharing and per week before the UI update VS Avg pin sharing per week after the update -Daily pin sharing before and after

  • No of pin shares per user after the update -No of unique users pressing the pin sharing button daily

Break down the user flow to pinpoint where the drop occurs.: User logs in, views images of interest, finds pin sharing button. This is where the friction happens. The user is not accustomed to new UI and struggles to find the button because of wither- the icon or colour has changed or the location/position of the button has chnaged. This breaks the flow and interest of the user causing decline in the sharing feature.

Hypothesize specific UI changes that may have influenced behavior.:

  • navigation changes -location/position change of the button -icon chnage of the button -sharing icon colour change -extra step or screen before the pin gets shared