There is a 15% drop in the open rate of Instagram App. You are the PM. Tell us what could have happened.

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There is a 15% drop in the open rate of Instagram App. You are the PM. Tell us what could have happened.

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Mohit Khatwani · Answer 1 · 2024-04-13T09:50:07+0000

There is a 15% drop in the open rate of Instagram App. You are the PM. Tell us what could have happened.

Some clarifying Questions

Open rate defination - No of people opening the app ?
- Answer - Yes
This drop of 15 % , what is time period
- answer -Since Last 2 weeks gradually dropped
The drop we are seeing it is on specfic platform ?
- answer -android/ios/ - across
The analytics dashboard it it firing right data and there no issues there?
- answer - no
do we know this drop is happening for new installs or repeat ?
- answer - its happening over all

Internal factors

User journey - User installs the app> opens the app> the app opens>user lands on homepage
1. Do we know that homepage DAU have dropped?
  1. yes becuase app is not opened than obviosu dau have dropped
2. ok but DAU has dropped due to app not launching
  1. or app not opended
  2. Are we tracking this event
    1. app open ?- ya so we are seeing that the app open event has also dropped in same ration is.i.e 15 %
3. Are there Complaints on customer support
  1. answer - no
4. Did we did few round QA to test the app
  1. yes and app seems to working fine

Users are essentially not oepning app at all this brings to look for other factor like

External factors
1. Was there a negative pr against insta in last few days
  1. no
2. Was there any political event in country which was forcing users to spend time somewhere else? - no
3. Is there competion app that has launched recently
  1. yes there is app which allows users launch the app and use Gen AI to create funny images
4. also on social media is that a trending topic
  1. yes - seems like

Ok looking at the above situation seems like competetion may be impacting the users to move and spend time there

Action item

Quickly launch MVP using Gen AI to allow users to post images and videos. This needs to be taken as aquick action item to retain back our app launches

Sucess metric - App launches per day

Tarun Kumar · Answer 2 · 2023-10-24T19:37:54+0000

A few clarifying questions before

Q. How long has this been happening, is it gradual or sudden? (No)

Q. Is this happening across geography, OS type (Android, iOS), and device (Tab/Mobile)? (No)

Q. Is this due to some trend or seasonality? (No)

Q. Is this some instrumentation issue? (No)

Q. Is this due to some way that we capture data? (No)

Q. Do we see a change in no. of users opening the app? (Yes)

So basically some users are not opening the Instagram app. That's fair to assume? (Yes)

Alright moving ahead would like to take a look at the funnel

The open rate of Instagram has gone down (funnel below)

User launches app > X% > User sees the login screen > Y% > User successfully logs in and sees the homepage

Is there a change in any of the metrics shown above? (No)

Alright moving ahead and looking at internal factors

Server-side issue causing app crash
A new feature release that is causing app crash
A new experiment that could be causing app crash

Next, I'd look at the external factors

Was there some bad PR?
Was this due to a connectivity issue?
Was this due to some regulation changes?
Is there a new competitor around?

Based on the above questions, I'd find a leading track and then investigate further. If there's a possible case, then I'd report the analysis of the issue and also recommend the next steps.

For instance, if this is due to some bug that was introduced that is causing these crashes, then I'd roll back the changes immediately.

Looking for feedback here, thanks!

Aditi Bhalla · Answer 3 · 2023-10-20T22:02:59+0000

Product Introduction: Instagram is a social media platform where viewers can share photo, video with their followers.

Clarifying Question:

Q: Does this open rate is related to Average Open Rate in a day or Average open rate per user in a day? Average Open Rate in a day

Q: Does any of the related metrics gets affected like # of DAU has affected? Yes ,it went down

Q: Does this effect is device specific? No

Q: Does this effect is realted to any segmentation? No

Q: Does BI tool is giving accurate result? Yes

Q: Did we have any change in the metric calculation?No

Q: Does this drop is sudden, gradual or seasonal drip?gradual . its happening since 6 months

External Factors

Q: Did we had any major strategy changes which has affected the changes? Yes , we have introduced some subscription model for monetization.

Analysis: Here, is the problem. Due to the strategy changes , users have moved to other platform.

Solution: Get the feedback from the users who are inactive. Create subscription tiers cater to the needs of the user.

Lokesh Kumar R · Answer 4 · 2021-06-27T16:11:33+0000

That's seems to be a interesting problem and certainly a bigger issue to be sorted as soon as possible.

The way I would like to approach the above problem is by first of all by understanding the question properly. Then would like to bucket the probable reasons on a high-level as Internal and External. Depending on my unnderstanding, I would like to start with a bucket an dive-deep into the sub-buckets one by one.

So, to start with, My very first question to understand the PS infront of me is:

How do we define open rate? Do we consider only the situation where users open the app without any stimulation by the firm through notification, ads or links?Open rate is basically number of app opening in a day. We include all the touchpoints like notification, organic opening, links, and ads.
How long are we facing the above issue? We are facing the above issue for quite some-time. The change has been gradual.
Do we see any relationship/connection among different demographics of users like their age, location, device type. No, the drop is pretty consistent across device, location and age factor.

Thanks for the above calrity. From the above discussion, we can understand that there could be an influence of external factors causing us the problem as the issue has developed gradually. However, since the issue has been common across worldwide, I would want to check the internal factors, espescially making sure that the data is actually right.

Internal Factors

Did we make any change to our defintion of metrics? Coz, this might change the number and comparing it with previous data as per the old metric definition might make us feel that there is a drop while in reality, there wouuld have been nothing. No, we did not make any change to the Metric Definition.

The other possibility is that there could be a change in how the data is being collected, that is any change in the reporting tools that we use? No, we haven't done any change to the way data is collected. Infact, we are pretty sure that the data is totally right.

Oh, Okay. Since I've got such a confirmation the next thing that I would like to ask will be:

Did we make any changes in the app? Can you be more specific.

So by "any changes", I mean to ask if there was any change in the UI, the algorithm, or some AB test running as a part of some experiment? We haven't done any changes to the Algorithm or are we conducting any AB tests. However there have been some UI changes.

What was the UI change that we did? We stopped showing the likes and comments to users to reduce the stress that one undergoes while posting something. However, this is a opt-in option,i.e, that One can bring the likes, comments count tab in settings.

Are we sure that the users are aware that they can change this to how it was before? Yeah, we are sure. Because the default setting shows the like and comments count. So If one has turned that off, will certainly know how to turn it on.

Wow, that's really a wonderful change. Since it is this way, I doubt this has any influence on what we are facing. This is because, Though likes can cause stress, it certainly helps creators like Meme page owners appreciate themselves and post more. Had this been turned off, creators could have stopped posting actively as they don't have an encouragement to do it. Once, creators posting frequency decreases, the users opening frequency will decrease as well as they won't have things to see in our app.

Okay, with the above discussion, it seems that the internal bucket does not seem to be an issue. Next, I would like to move next to the External bucket.

External Bucket:

So, in this, the influencing factors could be bad PR, Competition, Government Regulation and Change in User Behaviour. Of this list, I would straight away reject Bad PR as that would more likely cause a Sudden Change and not a gradual one.Similarly, I would reject the Government Regulation as the issue we are facing is worldwide. This seems a reasonable assumption. So what do you want to check next.

So next, I would like to check the Competition aspect? Did the competition launch anything new that we know of? We don't have any information on that. Any idea on how we can decide on that?

To decide on this and as well sa check if the issue relates to change in User Behaviour, I would first want to know if there are any increase in related metrics like, DAU/MAU, # of uninstallation of apps. This is because, since opening rate has reduced, it could be that active users became more of a casual users or it could be that they stopped being a user of instagram and have uninstalled the app itself.

The first would be more related to the change in user behaviour and the latter could be more related to something that the competition did so great that people ignored us totally. By the way the first does not right away rejects that the Competition influence, but I feel it is more reasonable to relate that change to user behaviour. Okay, on checking, we found that the DAU metrics has decreased while MAU has stayed pretty much the same. While there has been only usual noise in the # of uninstallations and nothing significant.

Okay, so I would attribute the above issue as a change in User Behaviour as of now. To decide it more accurately, I would like to look into the User Journey aspect and see where do we face a drop apart from the opening rate.

User Journey on a higher level

Opens the App-> lands on the news feed-> Interacts with the posts->

Session ends

Of this, Opening of apps can be through various ways like i listed above. Do we have a difference in any particular way? No.

So next, how are the engagement metrics doing with respect to creators? I'm focussing on the creators here because, when opening rate is decreasing and DAU is decreasing, obviously engagement of users (Consumers) will decrease. Sodiscussing the same will not help us understand the causation. However, If the engagement metrics related to creators are going down, we can understand that the opening rate decreasing is caused by this.On checking, we found that the # of posts generated are decreasing WoW.

So, when users don't have new posts to react with, the frequency with which they open the app will reduce. Do you want me to analyse why the creators have reduced postings? Yeah, what you said is the reason.Do share on a high level why creators have decreased their frequency?

Ideally speaking I would like to go through their journey and think upon why they are reacting this way. Since you are asking at a higher level, My answer would be: Probably the Steps that the users undergo is more tedious than how the competitors like TikTok have. The reason I'm comparing it with the competition and not the past of IG is that, we got it confirmed that IG team didnot make any change to the app at a technical level. This totally makes sense and you have got it right. The competition has used AI to make the editing process a lot simpler and as well introduced a feature that suggests creators on what they can create next depending on the trend in their location.

So as a next step should I also need to talk about what we can do to improvise the situation. No, That is not needed. Thanks for the insights that you brought to the table.

Florencia Spinella · Answer 5 · 2019-12-30T18:20:48+0000

I would start by clarifying some doubts.

How is the open rate measured? In what period of time? I'm trying to know here what's the specific metric that dropped. It can be unique users open in a day / total users with activity within 30 days, it could be total open rate per user per month, etc.

I will assume the answer is amount of users who open Instagram more than 1 time on a given day. So the number of users opening the app more than one time a day has dropped by 15%.

Once I know about the metric, I would go deeper about the group that is displaying this change in behavior:

- Is it the mobile or web app? If mobile, is it android or iOS, or both? is it specific to a certain version?

I will assume they say it's across all patforms and not specific to a version.

- Is this drop seen across all segments or is only seen in specific groups?

I will assume here that they say it's only in the segment of users who have been in the app for at least 6 months.

The hypothesis of why this group might see a drop in open rate, in order of importance:

1) They don't find it amusing anymore. They open the app early in the morning to see the news, but when they access again they see they have caught up with news and therefore don't see it as often as they would.

2) They want to spend less time using the app. They find themselved spending too much time in Instagram, and they want to limit its usage.

3) They have few interactions and feel demotivated to post stories or pictures in their profile. This people is found to have less than 50 friends.

And proposing some ideas to help engage this group of users:

1) Offer them suggestions on things to post (already applying filters and tags which create more engagement).

2) Increase the likelihood of this group's posts/stories to be seen and specifically for this group.

3) Push it more often/ more enticingly to connect to new people and widen their network (same as presenting this contact to other contacts who would add them as friends).

4) Re-evaluate the "caught up" feature. Make an effort to always have content available for the user, like reviving a post from a friend of "a year before" the date in a 'Remembering' section, or even including information about other less relevant friends in the news feed.

5) Make them feel good about using the app. Create a series of videos targetted towards this population about how instagram bolsters interactions and friendship, and always being up to date when it comes to friends. Create a "year" video about all the things that happened in the app - much like Facebook memories.

Gaurav P · Answer 6 · 2019-11-20T15:24:09+0000

Here's one way you can manage to successfully answer this problem solving question.

Drop in open rate

users not even opening once in a day - increase in inactive users
users not opening multiple times in a day - reduction in repeat opens

Assumption - This is happening across platform, geography, gender. Also, this is happening gradually over a period of time (decrease on monthly/weekly basis).

Factors impacting this behavior (metrics to check to see the impact)

Internal
- crashes - any app update which lead to crashes
  - Metrics to track - Crash Rate, ANR, average load time
- change in behaviour of users
  - impact of sub metrics (open rate has impact on sub metrics - activities users do post opening the app)
- complaints - from customer support, play store reviews
  - Play store rating, reviews (1,2,3), sentiment analysis
  - # of complaint tickets
External
- promotions - ran ads which lead to an inorganic boost in open rate (and then sudden drop)
  - last open date, # of times opened in a day where install source was promotion
- competitor shift

Assumption - Let's assume this drop is due to change in behaviour of user. Let's deep dive here.

To understand the change let's understand how users use the app and what changed.

Core activities

Feed interaction
- checking feed
- DM - chat w/ friends
- check friends - profile / photos
- checking friends of friends - profile & follow them
posting a photo / video
- upload / take a photo
- apply filters
- adding meta (text, hashtag, location)
search & my profile

Assumption - Majority of the users are consumers (99%) while only 1% are posters. majority of the time spent by user is on feed interaction activity. rest of the activities are smaller; so there is a change in behaviour on 'feed interaction'.

Metrics to check

# post scrolled
Time spent on feed
like a post
comments on post
stories
DM - chat
# of user's page opened in a session
# of follows / user in a day

Possible cases for less open rate

Case 1 - takes time to load new post (could be due to bad network)
Case 2- post's that are appearing in feed are no more interesting / exciting less leading to lesser open - daily or repeat opens in a day.

Moving forward w/ case 2 - which seems to be a possible reason

Dig dive on feed composition

My friend's post
Influencer's post (celebrities i follow) / stories

Assumption - Influencers are the one who drive the open rate a lot as they post more often to have a pull effect. Assuming there is a problem there.

Influencer has started posting less engaging content / spam
- Metrics to check
  - Trend - # of likes, comments on influencer | Time spent on post
  - # of Report spam
  - Sentiment analysis - # of abusive comments (as dislikes)
Influencer hasn't been active (posting less content)
- Metrics to check
  - # of post per day for top influencers (top 1000)

Improvements

Changes in sorting algo
- boost post which get more engagement (check growth rate of likes which is increasing as a trend; user you follow and promote it up)
- demote inactive, less engaging content
suggest other influencers to follow
- Help user generate other interests so that user can follow something else

rahul_g · Answer 7 · 2019-11-19T16:40:33+0000

Seek clarity

15% drop over what time frame - is it gradual or drastic? if drastic then figure out the dates when (we'll come back to this later), assuming it's drastic

15% is a drastic drop for a short period for a mature product like IG so there was deifnitely an issue

When you say open rate it mean the number of users opening the app or the % of app connect users who end up opening the app? assuming it's the former

Rule out errors/ data issues

have the metric definition changed recently

Is the data updated?

is the drop due to the an artificial spike? example: on new years the number of app open shot up drastically and then normally thus simulating a drastic drop, assume this is not the case

Did we make any changes to metric logging frameworks internally?

Assuming all of the still suggest there's been a drop

Check internal factors

Refer to when the drop started - did we do any feature rollout/app release/product releases that day(including front and backend)/experiemnt rollout

What other metrics are affected? since this is top of the funnel and data isn't an issue then all metrics down the funnel will be impacted, see which ones are more impacted than other - this should provide a clue

What are the customers saying check CS mail/app store/play store review - what are the customers saying

Try isolating - is the drop across App/web/mobile web, within app split by OS/OS version/App version/country/ISP/major popular phone models

Errors: Any spike in error counts

External

Check for

Major OS release

Did playstore or app store make any changes

Downtime/outages

trends - did the competition launch a new feature/new app

We should be able isolate the issue out using the process above

Leonardo Fernandes · Answer 8 · 2021-12-29T15:03:19+0000

1) Clarification Questions

When you say open rate, are people not able to open the app after clicking on it or are they not clicking at all?
I am the PM of what team exactly? What is my responsability?
Is it specific to iOS or Android or both?
Has this drop been gradual or has it been a peak? If it's gradual, for how long has it been droping?
Has it happened to a particular geographic region?
Has it happened to a particular segment or user group?

Let's assume that open rate means people are not clicking on the app; my area does not matter so much; it's not specific to any device; it's a gradual drop over the past 4 weeks; and it's specific to any segment or geographic region.

*Well, it's a gradual drop and people are not even clicking on the app, which pops up to my head something related to competitors, user behavior, or cannibalization.

a) Internal to the Company

Cannibalization
- Have we launched new products/features that might affect Instagram?
  - Yes, we have launched Shops on Whatsapp.
Business Strategies
- Have we put in place new strategies that justify the drop? For instance, we stopped some notifications.
  - No, we not put in place any relevant business strategy over the last 4 weeks.
Marketing Strategies
- Have we stopped important actions that have helped us get more open rate?
  - No, marketing is still the same.
Other Products
- Have we found similar drops in other products, such as Facebook App, Whatsapp or Messenger?
  - Not really. On the contrary, Whatsapp downloads and open rate have increased.

I'd stop here, since two answers gave me a good direction of what the problem might be

-----------------------------More questions to ask----------------------------------------

b) Internal to the Team

Bugs
- Have we noticed weird behaviors of out systems?
- Do we have any internal report about any problem that might affect the app?
- Have we experienced loading problems?
Partners
- Are all APIs working properly?
- Have people found problem in updating the app on google and apple stores? Are these stores working normally?
Updates
- Have we launched new updates recently?
- Without updating the app, can people still use it?
- Are we testing new features or products that might have affected it?

c) External

Competitors
- Have competitors launched new products?
Seasonality
- Over time, is this drop expected to happen?
Public Relations
- Have we been exposed to bad news on the media?
User Behavior
- Are users shifiting behavior towards the app? (journey/engagement)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2) Hypothesis

Well, I believe that the drop is explained by the recently launch of Shops on Whatsapp, the same feature that Instagram has. Since stores on Shops generally have whatsapp channels, people may prefer use it directly on Whatsapp rather than on Instagram. We can research deeper this hypothesis by looking at the following metrics:

Avg session and #downloads on Whatsapp of customers who have opened less Instagram
Time spent on Shops on Instagram and Whatsapp of those customers
Avg number of messages per customer per store on Whatsapp and Instagram of those customers

Does it all make sense?

3) Actions

The last thing I wanted to mention is regarding actions towards this problem. I believe that this drop is a trade-off from the launch, so if it was expected, it would not be a big deal. However, we could, for instance, use Whatsapp Shops to directly customers to Instagram to give feedbacks or react to products they bought, something like that.

sairah814 · Answer 9 · 2021-05-12T05:13:58+0000

Understand definition of open rate

Is this for a specific open rate channel? Push Notifications or organic app opens
Is there a specific user group that we’ve seen impacted here: drop in usage overall or drop in return usage over the course of a day
What time period have we seen this drop in open rate? Is this a sudden drop or been happening gradually?

Let’s assume open rate = sudden drop in the last week of return usage consistently happening through all channels

Understand context

Is there a decline in engagement within the app as well or is this limited to users dropping? Has there been a decline with sign ups overall?
I’d like to rule out seasonality. Did we see a similar drop this time last year?
Do we have any data on the customers that are dropping? I’d like to understand patterns like first time sign up, age groups, and/or typical engagement level.

Let’s assume that it’s limited to users dropping (no changes in engagement), not typical from last year and we don’t see any strong patterns on customers dropping although there have been larger declines from the gen x and millennial age group.

After comparing this data to other data points, I’d want to focus more deeply on root cause.

I think the place I’d want to focus is the types of customers dropping but I’d also want to rule out any feature upgrades that dilute the entry experience into the app. Are you aware of any design changes?
Interesting that we see larger declines in the above mentioned groups because they are usually more interested in experimentation and have less loyalty. I’d like to understand if we’ve seen growth of competitors like TikTok or Clubhouse in the market or other new entrants.

Let’s assume that we have data that other social media apps have seen increased usage.

My hypothesis is that open rates on instagram are dropping because users are spending more time on other social media channels like Tiktok and Clubhouse.

Next steps:

I would want to explore possible partnerships and features to re-engage these users.

Review our integration with tiktok and ensure that cross-posting hasn’t declined. Investigate further if it has. Otherwise, find new ways to engage users on tiktok to cross post to increase push to instagram. An example might be a special page for user tiktoks or tiktok ratings.
Offer an integration with Clubhouse so that users can post which group they’re currently attending or attended in the last week. You could also gamify by scoring channel convos and sharing on instagram
Offer a competitive service of “rooms” like clubhouse on instagram directly
Invest in additional video features for Instagram so users can share more videos on Instagram

I would first start with how we can increase partnerships with these apps to re-share on instagram. Depending on our relationships, this could be a quick way to re-engage users.

beetle62 · Answer 10 · 2021-01-03T00:54:27+0000

Problem Discovery:

Candidate ("C"): The first thing I would try to do is to dig further to understand the problem and its root cause. Has the open rate drop been a gradual drop or has it been sudden?

Interviewer ("I"): The drop has happened suddenly over the last 2 days.

C: Do we know if the drop is limited to a either mobile or desktop users of the site?

I: The drop has been across all platforms.

C: Do we know if the drop in open rate is global or restricted to a region or area?

I: The drop is global.

C: How do you define 'open' when speaking about the open rate of Instagram? Are you referring to people opening the app, those logging into it, or those interacting with it?

I: The open rate refers to those users logged into the site and interacting with it once a day at least.

C: Interesting, we are seeing a 15% sudden drop in people logged into and interacting with Instagram at least once a day across the globe and on all platforms. I will assume that any competitor behavior would have a more gradual vs. sudden impact on our users so I will first focus on any internal factors that may have caused the drop. Do you know if we have had any server issues?

I: Nope - our servers have been running fine.

C: I would like to focus a little bit on the user journey to help me explore possible points in the journey that might be causing the issue. A mobile user, for example, would typically open the app to which they are logged into, interact with the app, then close the app without logging out. Do we know if there were any recent updates made to the opening/logging in/running of the app?

I: We have recently experienced fraud issues. Everyone was logged out and they need to re-set their passwords.

Solution:

C: Okay that is very interesting, now that we know what has caused the problem, I would recommend further diagnosing the impact before embarking on solutions. I would explore the 15% of users that are no longer interacting with Instagram to determine if the issue is with the password re-set flow and if we can improve that process or make it easier for those individuals to change their passwords to ensure they return to interacting with the platform. I would also recommend exploring if some of those 15% may have security concerns post a fraud incident and if we need to do anything to restore confidence.

Srivallabh B K · Answer 11 · 2019-12-29T14:07:17+0000

Initial Questions Explored:

What is open rate? Is it (# of app opens) / (total # of app installs) in a given time frame?
What was the initial open rate? (60%??)
Any major changes made in the application?
What is the timeframe we're looking at?
Is it across all persona's?
Is this happening across the globe or particular geography?
Any external factors?
1. Direct Competitors gaining traction
2. Indirect Competitors gaining traction
3. Opposing apps - (Time Saving Apps)

Assumptions:

Let's assume that the drop of 15% is in the span of 6 months. Let's write the equation:

( # of app opens 6 months ago / # of app installs 6 months ago) - (# of app opens now / # of app installs now) = 0.15

Let's assume that the drop is across all identified persona's. (Explore, otherwise)

Let's also assume that the drop is global and not confined geographically (Explore otherwise)

Explore various competitors and the introduction of new entrants. Are there any time-saving apps, digital well-being apps that are gaining traction?

Evaluation:

Hypothesis 1:

Check for the # of app downloads and its monthly trend in the last 6 months? Any changes? - Let's assume NO. There has been a relatively steady growth in customers.

Hypothesis 2:

Check the (Avg # of opens / user) and plot a monthly trend over the last 6 months? Any changes? - Yes.

This means that the problem is not the number of people uninstalling apps, there is a genuine reduction of app openings.

Mind share: The portion of a user's brain dedicated to thinking about Instagram - Let's call this the trigger.

Since there is a drop => That means that % of trigger for users to click Instagram is lowered.

Why has there been a lowered mind share amongst customers?

Because, lately, because of awareness of digital well being created by various health associations and articles across the globe, people have started to use digital well-being apps to curb social media usage.

Solutions:

Provide valuable content on Instagram to drive user's engagement and provide a sense of well being.
Show a health timer notification adhering to prescribed standards. (This shows Instagram cared about our digital well being.)
Create a campaign to communicate that Instagram cares about customers and show the positive aspects of being on Insta and promote the above-mentioned features.