Define goals for a handheld gaming device for facebook. Follow up question: after 6 months, you see WAU increasing by 10% but session length decreasing by 12%, then would you still ship it?

Assuming FB is launching a gaming device where users can play games and interact real time with their family and friends. Users can also purchase new games.

Users will have to create avatars in order to use the device. This will give a feeling of being in presence of other users, very much in line with FB's mission or bringing people together.

For the goal I should look at acquisition, engagement, revenue or something else. I believe engagement is most important. After the device launched acquisition may not be a problem and may be high due to marketing efforts and social buzz. However, if engagement is low, it is an indication of device not being able to capture continuous user interest. For acquisition to sustain and grow it is very important for engagement / usage to be high. Low engagement will also impact FB's revenue in terms of less purchases on the platform, less opportunity to show ads.

Therefore, the goal of the device must be high engagement.

Engagement metrics that I would look at

Primary metric:

Weekly active users

Average time spent on the device per active user

Secondary metrics:

Average no. of users that a person is playing / interacting with -> This in turn will measure increase in awareness. Could use social listening tools to corelate social buzz with this metric

For acquisition to sustain and grow it is very important for engagement / usage to be high.

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Before making any decision, I would look at the reasons for decreased session duration It could be because of number of factors such as

.1. A new bug may have been introduced due to which user gets logged out

2. Geopolitical situation in the world or other major events, people attention is divided. May be spending more time on news websites vs. on gaming

3. New competition on market

4. Seasonality, during holidays family may be present physically together and hence spending less time in virtual gaming

 

For #1

This is a poor user experience. I would try to find out if the issue resolution has a quick turnaround. If yes, implement it while shipping the devices. If not then work with various stakeholders engineering, product, etc. to come up with a plan and also halt shipment until issue is fixed.

For #2 and #4 I would not halt shipment. It there is demand, I would continue to ship as these and temporary changes.

For #3 - I would try to do user research, find out more about competition, what features are promising, etc. and try to incorporate similar or better features in our device. I will not halt shipment.

So, to summarize I would set engagement metrics Weekly active users and Average time spent on the device per active user as primary KPIs for the gaming device.

If WAU goes up by 10% and avg. session length reduces by 12% then I will look at the potential reasons, try to find the root cause and then make and decision about halting shipment.