How do you measure the success of Instacart?

First discuss the Goal: Instacart puts priority on same day delivery with satisfied customers. It's goal is to create a reliable connection between the customers and the shoppers so the customers get more personalized shopping experience. Keeping that in mind, can we assume we are targetting to create better user engagement? Do you have any other goals that you would like to discuss? 

Interviewer: Also keep in mind, that we ae focused on the ease of use of the app. This means we need to understand if the customers are able to navigate to the end and come back again. 

Interviewee: Great, so we can consider User Engagement and Customer Retention for the scope of this discussion? 

Interviewer: Fair enough. 

Interviewee: Thanks. Is there any specific are you would like to focus on? App or Website? Particular user segments? Demographic preferences?

Interviewer: Not at this point. We can take this discussion on broader area.

Interviewee: 

So we are focusing on

• Goal as to identify success metrics, user engagement and customer retention
• Identify this across multiple states (demographic), user segments by age, and considering both mobil and web application.

Below are some metrics for user engagement:

1. Average buyers Count

2. Avergage($) spent by buyers

3. Average order size

4. Average orders per customer

5.Percentage of orders delivered within the same day

Below are some metrics for customer retention:

1. Frequency of order (average number of days between each order)

2. Average number of referrals made

The above metrics sliced by

1. Week over week, month over month, time period

2. Different age groups

3. mobile vs web app

Prioritization: 

About company, Vision, and Goals: (researched after only came across to the question)

About the Company: Inatacart is nearly 8 years old startup that connects users/buyers to the personal shoppers and local retailers in users/buyers area to shop and deliver groceries from the Personal shoppers, retailers, and Instacart store.

Instacart delivers groceries in as little as an hour! Users/Buyers can also buy groceries from Instacart and pick the groceries from available nearest Instacart store.

Vision: To dominate the online grocery industry in the US continent (currently available in the USA and Canada) and world.

Goal: The goal of the company is to deliver groceries to the end-user/Buyers to reduce the trip to the market. and get available groceries at a reasonable price at home/offices and pickup points. for local retailers, Instacart helps to more sales with high margin.

Assumptions 

I would like to focus on the metrics from a user, product perspective and company business goal(revenue, Monetization) and belive user and product would be the primary goal .and below are some I would like to focus on. 

 Acquisition: Where are the users coming from. identify the channel user coming from.   

• The user coming on the website, mobile site. or 
• How may users download the Inatacart app?      

To focus on acquisition it is important to evaluate the entire journey of the user and track every step of the user.

Activation:  "How good is the user/customers first experience and future experience during the entire customer life cycle"

• % of the user use Instacart after download and signup.
• DAU, and MAU.
• The average number of orders per day. 
• The average number of orders, ordered by the user. (Will help to target users whose order value is the below-average number of order)   
• The average number of items ordered by per user per order. ( Will help to encourage users whose order item is the below-average number of item in a single order  to add more items ) 
• What item users ordres frequently.        

Retention: How many users are returning to Instacart and why is Instacart losing others.

• % of return buyer in a day (Daily return user)  
• % of return buyer in a week (Weekly return user)
• % of return user in a month (Monthly return user)  
• Retention rate over daily, weekly and monthly.  

The companion metrics to the Retention is Churn. Churn Rate will tell if you have achieved a good product/Market fit.

• Customer Churn rate over daily, weekly and monthly.
• Customer acquisition rate > Customer Churn rate = Growth     

Referral:

• Net Promotors Score (NPS) 
• Viral coefficient (viral coefficient should always be greater than 1)  

Revenue/Monetization

• Average order size ($) per buyer.
• Average daily/weekly/monthly number of orders.  
• Decreasing customer acquisition costs.
• Average customer lifecycle value (customer lifecycle value is the amount of revenue you earn from a customer during their lifecycle).
• % of market share 

To measure the success of Instacart I would focus on the below metrics.

1. How Many User download Instacart APP (Acquisition)
2. DAU and MAU (Activation)
3. The average number of orders per day(Activation) - If growing directly customer satisfaction and Revenue.
4. Retention rate over daily, weekly and monthly (Retention)
5. Viral coefficient (Referral) - Will help in Acquisition
6. Average customer lifecycle value (customer lifecycle value is the amount of revenue you earn from a customer during their lifecycle).- Growing in customer lifecycle value will help to generate more revenue 

How would you measure success for Instacart?

Instacart is a leading online grocery delivery business and follows a mission to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together.

It works as a 4 sided marketplace for customer/shopper/brands/retailers.

Cust- can order food at home paying necessary fees and having to receive food at convenience.

Shopper- Getting an oppty to make some extra money by working either full time/part time and ensuring to accept orders by customers and delivering them the food requested.

Retailers- get more sales orders through online channel

Brands- marketing the products

Business Goal- Activation to have customers come and place order again and higher the sales orders higher the revenue

Customer Journey:

Customer selects the store-> Adds items to cart> Places Order-->Order request goes to Shopper→ accepts the order> purchases at store> delivers the food> customer receives food> gives ratings to shopper.

Funnel:

1. Cust selects store and adds items to cart

2. Places the order

3. Shopper delivers

4. Good exp---> gives good ratings to shopper and places order again

5. Bad exp→ gives bad rating and never comes back

6. No ratings--may/may not come

Success for Instacart-> 

Aha moment → Customer places their first order

Habit moment→ Customer places second order in same month

North Star Metric→ 

Number of sales orders per customer monthly; 

Number of orders fulfilled per shopper on daily/weekly/monthly

Key Metrics

1. Funnel conversion from stage to stage.

2. Number of orders with good ratings to shopper and experience and places the order again--Frequency of order per customer

3. Avg number of items per order (basket Size)

4. Avg number of orders per customer weekly/monthly/yearly

5. Avg $value per sales order

6. Abandonment rate (where in the path to purchase drop rate is high?)

7. Average session duration

8. %orders delivered per hour/day

Business metrics:

1. Subscriber growth rate

2. Unsubscribers

3. Cost per Acquisition ( avg costs incurred on promotion/marketing+tech infrastructure+content development)

4. Email Open rate

5. Email CTR

6. Display Ads CTR

7. Pay per Click traffic volume

8. Blog traffic

9. %orders delivered by referrals--NPS

Retailer Metrics:

1. Top 10% retailers in terms of market share

2. Average basket size per retailer

3. #of retail stores signed up with Instacart

4. Avg $ sales order value per retailer

Shopper metrics:

1. Shopper Satisfaction CSAT

2. #orders fulfilled per shopper daily/weekly/monthly

3. Avg Order size/volume delivered per shopper

4. #bulk loads vs light loads delivered per shopper

5. Frequency of shopper weekly/monthly/annually

6. Idleness (shoppers > customer orders in specific regions

7. Lost deliveries (customer order > shopper supply in high demand regions)

Prioritize as per mission and business goal:

1. Frequency of order placed by customer--Activation

2. %of orders fulfilled in 1 hour/ day--Mission

3. Subs growth rate--Revenue

4. #orders fulfilled per shopper daily/weekly/monthly-Partners aligned to achieve mission

5. Top 10% retailers in terms of market share--Partner aligned to achieve mission