How would you measure the success of Google Calendar?

Google metrics interview question: How would you measure the success of Google Calendar?

Describe the product

Google Calendar is part of the google suite of products that is included in both the free consumer version and the paid g-suite of products.  Google calendar is both a web and phone app and is tied into assistant.  Google calendar allows users to schedule their time, get reminders and invite others to those calendar appointments.  Google calendar also has a number of plug ins that link to web meetings such as zoom, and google meet. 

Clarifying questions

1.       would you like me to focus on the consumer version / the paid version or think of Google Calendar more holistically.  Holistically please.

2.       Does google have any specific goals for the product.  You are the PM

Google Calendar Goal

When I think of Google Calendar the main goal is help the user organize their time.  There might be secondary goals like inviting others to meetings, but that is pretty business focused when I use calendar I use often use it to remind me to go to the Dr.  When the kids have an appointment and don’t invite anyone else so the main goal is organize their time and this is an engagement metric.

User Journey

I’m going to skip the acquisition steps for the sake of time.  Gmail already has 1.8 billion active users.  While all those users may not use calendar the user pool is big and we set a top of the funnel metric latter on about % of users gmail users that use calendar.

1.       I have something I need to remember to do

2.       I open and check Calendar (this might actually be the 1st step ) I check my agenda every day

3.       I add the event to calendar

4.       Maybe others are involved I invite them too

5.       The time of the event approaches and I get a notification

6.       The time of the event approaches and I check my calendar

7.       Maybe I open the event

8.       I attend the event

9.       Sometime I reschedule the event

10.   The event passes

Metrics – because I am following the user journey like in order the usage funnel

Summary

The items are listed in a general funnel order and all should be tracked but from a general success standpoint the ones that stand out are

Active users – this can be time constrained and viewed over time to show health of the product

Users that add or have events on their calendar is the north star metric for success and ties to the goal of organizing their time. 

If I think of this as the top of the daily report

1.       I would want a line graph that shows active users per day I would want filters that break this out by user segment include new users vs returning users.

2.       Right under that I would want to see the number of users that added or had events added to their calendar I would want filters that break this out by user segment include new users vs returning users.

The rest are important but if calendar has users everyday and they are adding events then at a high level calendar is successful

What is Google Calendar? 

• Google Calendar is a time management and scheduling software by Google.
• Most users use it to schedule their meetings and to be on top of all the meetings and tasks they have to accomplish in a day.

Business Goal of Google Calendar is to increase engagement and user goal is to better organise time and schedule meeting/events/tasks on a day to day basis. 

Common Behaviours while using Google Calendar : -

1. Creating events 
2. Editing Events 
3. Adding a Calendar
4. Adding a Goal 
5. Checking Calendar 
6. Inviting people to existing events 

Metrics 

Creating events

• Number of events created per user per day or per week 

Editing Events 

• Number of events edited per user per day or per week 

Adding Invites

• Number of times invitees were added to events per user per week 

Accepting Invites

• % of invites accepted by users 
• Number of events added to a calendar per user per day or per week or per month

Checking Calendar 

• Number of events browsed per user per week

Adding a Calendar

• Number of users adding a new calendar per week 

Adding a Goal 

• Number of users adding a goal per day or per week or per month
• % of times suggested times were accepted by users while adding a goal

For retention, I will look at 

• Daily active users/monthly active users
• Number of times in a day calendar is checked per users

Prioritization

Based on impact to the goal, I would prioritize below metrics

Number of events created per user per day 

Number of events added to a calendar per user per day

Daily number of sessions 

Daily active users