Events usage, specifically, the "Yes, I'm going" usage is down significantly in the past three days. What would you do?

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Events usage, specifically, the "Yes, I'm going" usage is down significantly in the past three days. What would you do?

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Erik Larson · Answer 1 · 2023-07-03T17:08:47+0000

Understand the problem

What does usage mean? (% active users that click on feature)
What does events usage mean? (engagement on events)
Is there other usage other than “Yes, I’m going” also down? (no, reduction in yeses)
Is it device specific? (no, web anda mobile equal)
Decline in overall event creation? (yes)
Internal Factors:
- Did we launch a change? (no)
- Was there a way the metric was measured? (no)
- Was there a change in marketing campaigns? (no)
- Was the a change in the way notifications work, notifying someone of an invite? (yes)
External factors
- Seasonality? (yes, near Christmas holidays)
- Competitors entering space? (no)
- User behavior changing? No

2. Present your a hypothesis

The number of invites going out are all down due to the holidays over christmas. Also, the percentage of people accepting invites for those that are sent are higher on the no side, because of a higher % of people travelling.

3. Action items

Nothing to be done. It is expected behavior that the number of invites and % yes replies go down close to holiday seasons.

Adhokshaja Pradeep · Answer 2 · 2020-03-24T15:21:19+0000

The events usage feature has gone down significantly for the past three days. What would you do?

Assumptions

We are defining usage as % of Daily Active Users using this feature.

We are also going to assume that the following are not the reasons

Changes to dashboard implementation that leads to data parsing issues
Error in calculation of the metric. We might not be looking at the right features.
Issues related to security, leading to data access being revoked.
The reason for the decline is not due to seasonal factors. This feature is less likely to be used for events that happen on weekdays.

After laying down the assumptions, I would split my hypothesis (probable reasons) into two types

Internal Reasons

Change in UI/UX that might have made the feature less intuitive to use
The addition of new features might have a cannibalistic effect on the feature in question. (Maybe integration with external services that might send a notification to the event manager's calendar, might reduce the need to use the "Going" feature).
Changes in website implementation that might have changes in load speeds, that might prevent the feature from loading.

External Reasons

Governmental Factors: Protests/Curfew that might result in limited mobility. Thus % of people attending events might have gone down
Natural Phenomenon: Pandemics/Floods etc that might lead to individuals staying indoors.
Negative reviews about the feature in newspapers/blogs that might have lead to lesser use of the platform for event management.

aramakris21 · Answer 3 · 2020-01-13T04:13:52+0000

Clarification:Different status options to respond to events are Going, Interested, and not-interested. Has there been a significant drop in the number of events that users typically respond to with "Going", with a corresponding increase in the "not-interested" or "interested" responses? Or is it just a drop in "Going" responses without a corresponding increase in the other responses?

If latter, I would recommend digging into the folling metrics/KPIs/events to root cause further:

Was there a new release on the events feature?
Is the drop limited to a specific geographic location or endpoint in production?
What are the availability numbers of the events feature?
Has there been an incident or event in the news that would affect the usage of this feature?
Has DAU of the application been impacted over the past few days?

If the former, I would look at the following features:

Again look at identifying if drop in "going" responses with a specific geographic location and if there was an event or weather situation that would impact users attending events.
Were there code changes deployed in production that changed the logic of displaying potentially appealing events to users?
Was there negative news about the events feature that would impact user's trust of the feature?