Signups on Codecademy are up 15%. Why do you think this happened?

Clarifying questions

Are these paid signups or free signups? Let’s assume these are free signups.  

Lets state some high level reasons for the same. 

• We are running a promotional campaign in specific regions

• Signup experience is revamped and we have reduced a number of steps

• We have launched a new feature which has significantly attracted a large audience 

• We have slashed prices due to which more people are signing up and then converting to paid users to learn to code and be job ready. Considering these are free users we can rule out this. 

• Codecademy has started new courses which are in huge demand in the job market or companies have started to consider coding as a min requirement to be hired for certain roles such as QA, product management. 

Let’s investigate further using TROPIC method

• TIME : Is it gradual or sudden ? 

Gradual increase would be a result of slow gains in traffic or higher conversions.

Sudden increase would indicate a result of a new promotional offer or earned media due to a new feature launch or bug in tracking mechanism in the analytics platform.

• Region: Is this increase in a specific region or globally? 

Increase in any specific region would indicate this is a result of a promotional campaign in that region.

• Other Features: Is it the result of a new feature launch?

• Platform : Is the increase on any specific platform?  iOS or Android or Mobile or Web 

• Are there any changes in the industry ? Certain courses in demand or more job profiles require coding as a prerequisite which has resulted in more users signing up.

• Is there any impact on any other metric due to this change?  For example usage of other features etc. 

Let's assume the increase spiked on one day and then remained consistently high - usage on other features is also up 5%, and the increase is 90% mobile.

Dig Deeper into possible reasons

• Clearly there could be a bug in analytics system for mobile 

How to check? 

We can actually do some manual testing and check if the usage and signups are accurately tracked.

How to solve it? 

If there is any issue, we should work with the dev and analytics team to get the tracking sorted immediately by releasing bug fixes for the same. 

• Result of a new product feature launch for mobile app and media around it

How to check? 

We can check if we have launched a specific product feature for a mobile on a certain date and also check if any specific tech blogs have been publicizing it resulting into more downloads on a given date and subsequent increase in usage and signups which actually spiked on a specific day. 

How to solve ? 

There is nothing to solve here. We should run some marketing campaigns around the new feature to attract more users. 

• Revamped mobile experience for users and promotional campaign around it 

How to check? 

We can check if any release was done around the date when it spiked. We can also check with the marketing team if they ran any promotional campaigns specific to mobile.  Also post revamp through analytics, we can check if users are using more features from the app and are able to complete certain tasks.

How to solve ?

Again there is nothing to solve here. We should continue improving the experience through user testing and customer feedback. If we didn’t reach satisfactory numbers, then we should see what went wrong and run more targeted campaigns on right channels towards the right set of users to increase conversions.