This document discusses hacking mobility and experience hackathons at 1-800-Flowers.com. It defines hacking mobility as transforming contextual mobility challenges into powerful customer engagement opportunities. Experience hackathons are intensive collaborative sessions focused on improving some aspect of the user experience, such as technology, design, or marketing. 1-800-Flowers.com conducts bi-weekly experience hackathons and more frequent hackathons during peak seasons. These hackathons have led to improvements like faster app performance, optimized checkout flows, improved input methods, and more targeted marketing, resulting in increased sales metrics.

1. Hacking Mobility: Lessons from 1-
800-Flowers.com
Amit Shah
Vice President of Mobile and Social Media
1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Inc.

2. 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

3. Hack
Improve and make things better

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Hacking Mobility
Transforming contextual mobility challenges
into powerful opportunities for engaging
customers

8. 1
Move
Quickly
2
Be
Iterative
3
Continuously
test user
context
4
Build open team
culture
Hacking Mobility: Core Lessons

9. Hackathon
A focussed, intensive and collaborative
exercise to make things better

10. 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…

11. Experience Hackathon
A focussed, intensive and collaborative
exercise to make things any experience
better

12. 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

13. • 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%
0
3
6
9
Dom
Content
Load
Full Page
Load
Time(sec)
Load Times on 3G
network
Before
After
34%Improvement
21%Improvement
Experience Hackathons: Technology Focus

14. 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

15. Experience Hackathons: Design Focus - Input

16. Experience Hackathons: Design Focus – Auto
correct

17. Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus
1 week out 2 days out

18. Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus
Mother’s Day 1 Day After

19. Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus

20. Experience Hackathons: Marketing Focus

21. 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

22. Most important hack = Cold Beer

23. Hacktastic Thank You!
Contact:
ashah@1800flowers.com
516-237-4189