Identify one metric for Facebook Marketplace that the whole team should monitor daily.

First off let's just get on the same page by establishing a common definition of what Facebook Marketplace is and how it's used by users. To put it succinctly Facebook Marketplace is Craigslist on Facebook. Users can list different goods they are trying to sell or get rid of such as computers, shoes, bicycles, rooms for rent, etc., and other users can reach out to the seller after viewing the post. Buyers can search by specific terms and apply various filters like distance.

In order to set the stage for this question, I think it's important to examine the product in the context of it's company and their mission statement. Facebook's mission statement is bring the world closer together and give users the power to build community. Facebook marketplace directly supports this mission by allowing members of their local communities to connect with each other in order to buy and sell goods.

Metrics

We want to narrow down to a single metric that best reflects how well Facebook Marketplace is enabling users to buy and sell items, so let's first brainstorm a bunch of them then narrow it down from there.

Also, I think it is worth calling out that there are both buyers and sellers as this is a two-sided marketplace our chosen metric should reflect success for both types of users.

There are an infinite number of metrics we could write down so in order to stay organized I like to group metrics by the different stages of the user lifecycle.

Awareness - Let's not focus on this, Facebook Marketplace is pretty ubiquitous and appears by default in the left hand nav sidebar.
Adoption - # of people who have created a listing or viewed a listing
Engagement - # of users who have purchased or sold an item in the last 3 months, median # of items per user that have been bought or sold in the last 3 months
Retention - % of users who have bought or sold an item in the last 3 months who have also bought or sold an item in the 3 months prior to that
Monetization - Going to suggest we ignore this, I don't believe Facebook takes a cut of any sales or offers paid promotions to boost your listing.
Referral - This is too far downstream for us to prioritize, but it could be something like average number of times a listing is messaged to or shared with another user.

Prioritization

Out of the above steps in the user lifecycle I'm going to suggest we focus on engagement and monitor the median # of items per user that have been bought or sold in the last 3 months

I'm choosing Engagement over retention because if users are getting value out of the product they will be engaging with it more and thus more likely to come back again. Additionally, adoption tells us whether or not users have tried it out but gives us no indication of user stickiness.

I feel as if 3 months is an appropriate window for someone to buy or sell something. This certainly isn't a daily activity.

I'm choosing this over the other engagement metric because the other one would ebb and flow with the total number of FB users on the platform. Furthermore, we are looking at the median instead of the average here to alleviate any concerns regarding professional power sellers or flippers skewing the numbers upwards.

Downsides

The one big red flag I have with choosing this metric is, are we even able to measure it? Users don't necessarily pay through Facebook so we don't really know if a transaction actually occurs.

A couple alternatives we could measure since we don't really know if the transactions occur is to ask users if they've sold it through FB marketplace when they take down a listing or to measure the amount of messages exchanged between buyers and sellers.

As we are choosing a single metric, this is kind of high level. It doesn't tell us how many users are using FB marketplace and it doesn't give us any details about what is being bought and sold.

When you introduce any new featue or product on a platform, you are inherently competing with all of the features for user attention. We don't know how Facebook marketplace is impacting the Facebook product in general. For example, maybe we pull users away from the newsfeed and they spend less time on the platform overall.

Summary

In order to measure the success of Facebook marketplace at helping users buy and sell goods locally, we are going to monitor the media number of items per user bought and sold in the last 3 months. If we do not have accurate reporting of this metric, we will use a proxxy metric which will be the media number of conversations per user. A conversation will be defined as the buy and seller each exchanging at least 2 messages.

Anonymous duck · Answer 2 · 2022-01-03T03:42:57+0000

What is the feature (Facebook Marketplace): It is a platform where people can list items (seller) online and people can view and buy items (buyer) through Facebook. You can view listings and can choose to complete the transaction outside of FB.

The goal of the feature: FB built this feature as another way for people to get to know each other nearby - in line with their original goal of social networking.

The business goal of the feature: Through this feature, they expect people to spend more time on FB (marketplace exists inside of FB) and hence increase user engagement. This eventually will drive up revenue for FB (FB ads).

User Journey:

1. User clicks on Marketplace and views listings there.

2. User likes a product, sends a message to the seller through FB messenger

3. Seller responds through FB messenger.

4. They meet offline to exchange products and money.

5. Seller removes the product from FB marking it as sold (through FB)

For this feature, there are metrics that can be defined at every stage. I would first like to define those metrics and then prioritize them to pick up the most important one:

User acquisition: User clicks on marketplace option on the left of the screen

No of users who clicked on marketplace option

User activation: User interacts with the feature

No of users who scroll through posts
Avg time spent per user on marketplace
Avg no of items listed per user
Avg no of listed products per user that he/she has clicked and viewed it

User engagement: User interacts with the post

No of conversations started on FB messenger through the marketplace
Measure interactions per post in terms of likes, comments
Percentage of products marked as sold on marketplace (through FB marketplace only)

User retention: User visits marketplace again to either view products and engage with them or list a new product

30 days retention per user

If I had to choose the most important metric, I would go with the number/percentage of products that were sold through FB marketplace and see if it is increasing (which is in line with the business goal).

The reason for looking at this metric specifically is that only when users are able to sell their items through FB, will they return to the platform to sell more items (driving user retention up). Looking at other engagement metrics like time spent, no of FB messages exchanged would not be very helpful, because it could be the case that people were initially highly engaged but were eventually not able to sell their items through this platform. This will not make them come back here to sell their items here. Hence, other engagement metrics alone would not be very helpful.

prisingh · Answer 3 · 2020-05-01T00:07:03+0000

Give me your feedback on my approach to this metrics question.

Feature: Marketplace lets you discover, buy and sell items in your local community. Considering FB's strength of its social graph,you can get more information on the seller or buyer, chat with them or even have access to their profile

Goal: Goal of Marketplace is to connect buyers and sellers in the local area so they can transact. While doing so FB aims to increase engagement on the platform by diversitying in the ecommerce vertical.

Users of Marketplace:

Buyers - Regular FB users, thrift stores,

Sellers - Regular FB users, Brands

Metrics: The goal is to see if the product is meeting its mission which is enabling users to discover items and transact but also measure how the experience is at every stage of customer journey to understand overall health of the product.

Primary metric: Since the main goal is to enable buyers and seller to connect and transact, my primary goal will be to track the number of suucessfull transactions on a daily basis and see how the number is growing DoD, WoW, MoM.

Daily metrics: It is important to track overall performance metrics on a daily basis to esnure it is not impacting the primary metric.

In order to measure the overall product health, it is important to consider customer journey and track metrics at each of the stage.

Buyer Journey

User goes to the marketplace tab on FB app
User can discover items based on category.
User can see seller prodile, rating and can contact the seller for details.
Buyer and Seller exchange messages and finally transact.
Buyer can provide feedback about the seller

Seller Journey

User goes to the marketplace tab on FB app
User uploads the item with a description in the appropairte category
If a seller is interested, buyer gets a private message from the buyer
Both buyer and seller exchanges messages and finally transact

Usage Metrics

Number of new users visiting marketplace. How this number is growing WoW basis.
MAU: Number of visitors visiting marketplace on a monthly basis.
If these number are not increasing then we are not atracting customers or loosing old customers fast.

Product Discovery

% of buyers who exit marketplace as they couldnt find the item based on the search query.This will provide insights into if FB needs to add a new category, add more sellers or its algorithm needs to add the product in the right category.
% of sellers who couldn't find a category for their product. This will provide insights into if FB needs to add a new category or its algorithm needs to add the product in the right category.
Avg time spent seraching for a product. Ideally this increase in time is desirable if the user browses items and evenutally transacts. Long times might be an indicator that users cannot find what they are looking for so this has to be correlated with if the user exited the page as they couldnt serach for the item

Transaction Metrics

% of listings that lead to a transaction. Tracking this over a week, month will provide insights into volume of transactions.
% of transactions per month as a factor of number of visits during the same time. This provides insights into probability of visit leading into a transaction
Breaking the transactions based on category will provide insights into what products sell more.
Avg time it took for transaction from the time item was listed. The goal is to reduce this as much as possible.

Engagement metrics

Number of products added/day for sale and how the number is growing over a period of time
Number of transactions on a daily, weekly, monthly basis
Avg number of messages exchanged before transaction.

Retention

% of repeat customers making a purchase
% of repeat customers selling a product

Bounce Rate

% of users who leave marketplace immediately after landing on the page.

Revenue Metrics

Gross merchandise volume of transaction over a week,month, year

Performance Metrics

Page load time
Search sucess rate

While the primary goal of marketplace is driving the transactions, I will track this along with the search success rate on a daily basis as that is a main driver for successful transactions.

solders15 · Answer 4 · 2020-04-30T18:45:43+0000

Problem: Identify one metric for FB Marketplace that the whole team should monitor on a daily basis. Identify one metric that all the team should be aware of and monitor on a daily basis that would indicated how well the biz unit is operating.Scoping:There are two dimensions to check here. One is how aligned it is with the company mission. - bringing people together. So how many people are connecting based on this on a daily basis. Second is regarding Product health - Again there will be two dimensions - One is conversion rate (and the associated bounce rate) which deals with the product objective, second is performance. of the service - you have bunch of metrics here such as page load time, first byte/last byte times, weight of the app, search efficiency etcIs there any signal being received by the team about any particular issue? -NoGoal:I would generally keep an eye on the performance stats every day as this does affect the overall objective of the product. It is also important that the feature aligns well with the mission of FB. However, the main goal that I would focus is revenue, which is the true indicator on how successful marketplace is. i.e. the number of people who find what they need when they get to marketplace. Metrics:Primary metric: Number of fruitful conversations completed per day on marketplace.

A fruitful conversation is one between a seller and buyer that extends with several back forth. I would measure the sentiment as well as whether there is any mention of whether they are going to meet to conclude the trade etc.

Secondary metrics:

- Bounce rate - number of people who arrive at Marketplace but don't complete the journey

- Ratio of products sold/per day to total products offered/day

- Average days taken for products to sell overall and within different verticals.

- Spam check - Number of spam posts/day

- Illegal check - Number of illegal posts/day

- Revenue split among the verticals in Marketplace

- Retention rate - #number of repeat customers per day/overall customers

- New member rate - Number of new customers per day/overall customers

- Number of verticals represented

- total arrival rate into market place

- Various infrastructure issues

J_killjoy · Answer 5 · 2024-08-11T07:10:42+0000

Describe fb marketplace and how it fits into FB’s mission -

FB marketplace connects buyers and sellers on the facebook app. Through marketplace buyers discover the products being sold by small businesses or other facebook users like them. Sellers put up details like product price, availability, images and other relevant details for buyers to evaluate their products. Sellers can sell a variety of products like renting a house, selling furniture, clothes, makeup, electronics etc. Buyers and sellers transact outside of facebook marketplace. In a nutshell, the fb marketplace acts as a point of discovery for buyers and a point of promotion for sellers. That way it aligns with the mission of facebook to help people make meaningful connections by letting buyers and seller connect with each other and bring the world closer together.

Clarification-

I am assuming I need to identify the one metric that matters for fb marketplace in its current state? Yes
Do we want to define a metric for any particular geography? The reason I am asking this is that fb marketplace might be launched in the US for some time now but has been launched in India just recently, so the goal of the product would vary in these two geographies.

Let’s assume that we want to measure for all markets where fb marketplace has been launched for quite sometime now and is a mature product now.

Also I understand that marketplace users could be buyers, seller and advertisers. Do you want me to focus on defining metric for any specific cohort or think at an overall metric for the fb marketplace.

Let’s do for each cohort and then a global metric for the entire marketplace

Ok, this is how I am going to think about this problem
1. I will first start by defining the goal of the fb marketplace as a whole and for each cohort.
2. Then I will take you through the user journey so that we broadly understand the actions that each marketplace user takes
3. Then I will list down the metrics corresponding to each cohort and their journey
4. Finally we will pick one metric for each cohort and global metric which aligns with the goal of the product

Defining goals

Fb marketplace being a mature product will not be focusing right now on acquiring fb and non-fb users to use marketplace. So acquisition is a non-goal. As the primary focus of fb marketplace is also not to facilitate the transaction on the platform rather let users do that on their own, so fb never started this with an objective of directly monetising users. So revenue is a non-goal as well. Fb is primarily trying to make users come back to fb more often for a variety of needs. In this case, to shop for their needs. So, I would take engagement as the primary goal for fb marketplace.

Now coming to each cohort :

For Buyers (fb users), goal is engagement and how fb can make users come to the platform again and again for their buying needs. This is also the primary cohort which drives the overall goal for fb marketplace.

For seller( fb users or small businesses), goal is engagement and how fb can make users default to fb for selling any item.

For advertisers, goal is acquisition and how fb can help advertisers generate leads through marketplace.

Defining user journeys:

1. Buyer : Search (through categories or direct search) > Browse through results page > click a post > view details > message seller > Buys product > confirms if bought or not

2. Seller : Creates post by uploading images, adding price, description and other details > Posts the item on marketplace > receives messages from potential buyers > schedules a demo or tour of the product offline or virtually > marks as sold

3. Advertiser: creates post by uploading images, adding links and descriptions > redirects users to detail page to collect information or perform an action like installing an app etc

Metrics:

1. Buyers:

Acquisition - no. of new user sign up on fb directly through organic search

Adoption - % of fb users who browsed/searched at least once on marketplace

Engagement - daily active users on marketplace (active user is someone who searches for products and/or views the listed products;

Revenue - avg. no. of items bought on marketplace per active user in a month
Retention - D30 retention of marketplace active users

2. Seller:

Acquisition - no. of unique accounts which has posted at least one item for sale

Adoption - % of fb users who posted at least one item for sale

Engagement - avg. no of items posted for sale per active seller in a month/year; new listings added per week on marketplace

Monetization - avg, no of items sold per active seller in a month/year

Retention - D30 retention of active sellers

3. Advertiser:

Acquisition - no. of unique business accounts which has posted at least one ad in marketplace

Engagement - new listings added per week

Monetization - CTR on impressions

Retention - D30 retention of business accounts (whether they are coming back with new listings or continuing their own listings)

For buyer and seller , engagement being the goal, metrics buyer DAU on marketplace and new listing added per week on marketplace capture engagement respetively.

For advertiser, monetization being the goal, CTR on impressions will reflect if on an average businesses are generating leads effectively or not compared to other avenues outside of marketplace.

At a platform level, engagement will be best captured by the buyer engagement metric i.e buyer DAU on marketplace as a healthy DAU will indicate that users choose marketplace as a preferred destination for product discovery and this will further encourage sellers and businesses to post their listings as well.

anonymous · Answer 6 · 2023-02-10T19:04:14+0000

Describe the feature

Identify one metric for Meta (Facebook) Marketplace that the whole team should monitor daily.

The Facebook marketplace brings buyers and sellers together from their local community. People use the marketplace to sell and transfer used goods. However, from my understanding of the marketplace, it does not include a star ranking system for buyers or sellers. Without this ranking system, buyers and sellers are exposed to a higher level of risk.

Choose a goal

After digging deeper, we have seen a lot of negative responses and customer support calls from people who have not been satisfied with the marketplace due to fraudulent activities. Not only that, but selling transactions within the market have dropped. New items posted for sale have dropped. Our active users visiting the sites have dropped. Based on customer qualitative and quantitative data, we know this is not due to seasonality, a shift in our marketing efforts, or a recent version role out.

Walk through the customer journey.

Seller

logs into or creates an account, creates a product page by adding a description and photos as well as contact information and price. Then add keywords for searching. When finished, make the product live.

Buyer

They log in or create an account. Next, they search for items or create a wish list for their local area. Once found, they can contact the Seller to ask any additional questions. If everything checks out, they can then proceed to make the purchase.

After purchase, products are exchanged.

Below is a list of all the customer journey phases a user can go through

Awareness

I will not discuss how FBMP advertises or makes customers aware of the MP. Instead, I will focus on buyers and seller awareness of each other.

Sellers are aware of customers' inquiries about a given product via notifications.

Sellers know how much traffic or if someone has booked marked their product.

Sellers know when a product has sold, and the transaction has been completed.

Buyers are aware of bookmarked product updates.

Buyers can communicate back and forth with the Seller.

Buyers will know when payment and shipping have been completed.

Because this ranking system isn't offered, buyers or sellers need to be made aware of this feature.

Acquisition

due to the negative experience our customers are having with the current FBMP. We need help to acquire new customers. We have seen an increase in our CAC, and our inbound and outbound marketing channels have not been performing as they had in the past.

Engagement

The star ranking system would build trust between buyers and Sellers. Intern, we would see an increase in login rate, more time spent in the marketplace, Keyword searches would increase, and communication between buyer and Seller would increase. We would also see more sellers posting items to sell. Increase in buyer's AOV, transaction volume would increase.

Retention

Because the star rating would positively affect our buyers and Seller's experience, we would see an increase in returning customers' posts and transactions.

Monetization

FBMP would make more money because the number of transactions would increase. FBMP could come up with a premium subscription for power customers. We would want to track how quickly something sells from being posted or bookmarked.

Referral

Because people transact in a trusted environment, they naturally share their experience and the item they purchased. Therefore, we could implement a Seller referral discount. From the buyer's perspective, we could track how many times a person sends a link to a potential buyer and follow if that buyer purchases that item, bookmarks it, or passes it on to someone else.

Evaluate your metrics

Working with the interviewer, we have agreed that creating a star rating is the direction we need to go.

The first metric to measure will be if people know this new feature exists by tracking our marketing initiatives. The second will be if people are using it as we expected. Third, buy following how many people have left reviews. We will also monitor customer support and track KB articles.

Summarize your answer

Due to the lack of trust and people reporting being taken advantage of, they need a way to reduce the risk of buying something online from a stranger. An industry-standard star ranking system needs to be implemented for the FBMP to succeed. The tool's first metric we will monitor will be how many people are using the star ranking tool.

SPD_2017 · Answer 7 · 2022-07-26T00:24:23+0000

Clarifying questions:

Is there a specific goal behind tracking this metric such as user engagement, adoption, or retention?

Interviewer: No

Ok, I am going to take a minute to articulate my thoughts and propose the answer.

FB has 2.9 B daily active users.

FB Marketplace is a platform for FB users to buy/sell goods and services. Marketplace enables the communication between the buyer and seller via FB messenger. Each FB user has an eCommerce profile created by default which is used in the Marketplace setup.

Goals: buy/sell goods & services (transactions)

User persona:

Seller: users, stores that list their goods ans services, communicate with buyers

Buyer: users that search and set alerts for specific goods, services, make offers, communicate with sellers.

Acquisition:

Since FB already has huge number of DAU, user acquisition is not something FB marketplace needs to worry about.

I will focus on adoption/Engagement for this exercise since increased adoption, enagement results in better retention rate.

Since the main goal of this product is to enable transactions between buyers and sellers. I think the most important metric to track is the "number of transactions".

If the number of transactions (when a seller marks an item as SOLD) over Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Q shows similar trends, the product is working to achieve the impact it was set out to.

If there are often fluctuations in the trend, then there are areas that need improvement that need to be identified using metrics surrounding the users such as buyers, sellers, engagement etc.

weiwei · Answer 8 · 2021-08-25T23:51:13+0000

Describe – It’s a platform that connects people who have items to sell and people who are looking for items, such as secondhand items which are good bargains. (peer resale site)

A quick note - FB Pay is rolling out slowly, and may not be available to all users. Users can choose Paypal or Venmo or cash outside the platform. A good clarifying question here could be - is it feasible to track transaction dollars for all users? Is there any specific business/product strategy related to FB Pay I shall keep in mind?

Whys - FB invested in the Marketplace, perhaps because it helps with the overall FB product user retention. Since there are very few competitors out there at this scale providing this functionality and doing it effectively. Esty could be one for handcrafted items. So no matter you are a new user or a long-term user of FB, you may decide that FB Marketplace is easy to use and difficult to substitute. So, engagement with FB Marketplace may lead to---> FB long-term user retention (or say expanding user base for FB Pay?)

What to Measure – Let me discuss the top 3 things that could be really important to monitor here. Then I will discuss why I picked them, and later narrow down to one metric as a final recommendation. So what’s worth looking at daily? Perhaps a product health metric, or a north star metric.

First, I will think about engagement. How lively is the marketplace in different regions?

Since the natural usage frequency depends on life goals and changes in their living situation. And seasonality may play a big role here.
What key user activities may be related to engagement? It could be some of the following:
- % of sellers visited who posted vs or daily total seller posts —— again seasonality makes this metric difficult to interpret
- Average time spent by seller to create posts? —— seller is important to the platform, so we want to make sure they have smooth user experience
- Productive interactions between buyer and seller, such as DMs which could be difficult to filter for. Or simply likes and comments with a seller post on average. This metric could vary a lot based on the type of item and the local demand.

For primary metrics, we'd want ones that are relevant to our business goal, and are actionable as well as sensitive to product improvement. For secondary metrics, I'd like to consider counter metrics related to user trust and whatnot.

Primary Metrics

I will recommend tracking % of sellers visited who posted to monitor how engaged the sellers are. Then, for buyers, let's say... average interactions (comments + likes) with sellers among buyers who entered to search for items.

Secondary Metrics

Last, there are two secondary metrics that I think would be important to keep in mind.

One is more of a guardrail metric monitoring trust and abuse, say user reports of deceptive information, which may lead to user frustration and churn or even legal risks. The other one would be ... average seller posts saved by buyers, related to item discovery and demand matching.