Gadi Lahav, Head of Product, Financial Times - How A North Star Helps Develop Better Products

1. How a North Star helps develop
better products
Gadi Lahav | Head of Product FT.com | Financial Times

2. 930,000 paid for customers
730,000 digital only subscribers
1.9 million daily readership
We operate with a strict paywall
We are a publisher - but commercially we are a
subscription based digital company
About the FT

3. Commercial Goal
One Million Subscribers

4. To Measure is to Know

5. 1st Problem: Metrics are Proxies

6. Metric
Total Time Spent
1st Pitfall: Metrics are Proxies

7. 1st Pitfall: Metrics are Proxies
Real Value
Viewing interesting content

8. Metric
Newsfeed interactions
1st Pitfall: Metrics are Proxies

9. 1st Pitfall: Metrics are Proxies
Real Value
Connect with people you care

10. 2nd Pitfall: Many truths
Email
Alerts
Attending
Events
App
Downloads
Reader
comments
Facebook
Likes
Sharing
Stories
Time Spent
Reading
Twitter Followers
and Retweets
Multichannel
Consumption

11. ● A single metric
● SImple to Understand
● With consistently proven correlation with your real goal
A North Star

12. Fhe FT North Star

13. Subscription is all about Habits

14. We kept on finding...
Revenue
vs. Usage
Conversion Rate
vs. Engagement
Cancellation Rate
vs. Engagement

15. Our “North Star”
Engagement Score: RFV
Recency | Frequency | Volume

16. Recency
Frequency
Not everyone is a digital news junkie
Best Customers
Engagement opportunities

17. Correlates with Renewal Rates of B2C

18. And with Lifetime Value

19. It correlates with B2B renewals and upsells

20. How The North Star Guides Our Product
Development

21. Our Product Vision
Help our readers make better business decisions to
advance their career/business by providing them the
most relevant information to them, without
obscuring the FT view and saving them time

22. MyFT
•A Twitter-like follow topic
feature: keep up to speed with
your specific interests
•Once following, users get a daily
email digest and an on-site feed
page to articles

23. myFT | Impact on RFV
Engagement increased 86%
compared to the control group

24. Case Study | Speed
When we launched Next first MVP 5% of our most devoted users opted in
The site had few features and less content than old FT.com
Yet, they immediately became more engaged
Why?

25. Case Study | Speed
● A series of tests:
○ Control: Fastest site
○ Variant A: 1 second slower
○ Variant B: 2 seconds slower
○ Variant C: 3 Seconds slower
○ One test with a variant of 5 seconds slower

26. Case Study | Speed
Hypothesis: Every second counts
True!
You could see the impact
from the very first second.

27. Case Study | Speed
What does it mean financially?
1 second = $millions
More than any feature besides myFT

28. Case Study | Speed
Award winner
Best Website
2017
Best Use of
Technology

29. Case Study | Going back to the iOS App Store

30. Case Study | Optimising Notifications

31. Sum it up: 3 Takeaways

32. ● A single metric
● SImple to Understand
● With consistently proven correlation with your real goal
Find A North Star

33. ● Focus on the most important thing
● Have one single version of the truth
● Consolidate effort and conversation
That is helping you to

34. ● Have your users gained value?
● Have your numbers gone up as expected?
● Is the North Star correlation valid and accurate?
Challenge it

35. Thank you!
Gadi Weislovits Lahav