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How essential are domain expertise in managing a product?
Image courtesy: Fusion VenturesRecently I asked this question on my LinkedIn feed and yet to get a single reply. I have been pondering over it by myelf for some time. If you recollect the core product management skills preached around, those are hardly specific to a domain or industry.What has been your experience as a contributing product manager, or what have you seen in other product managers around?Like in sales, marketing, or accounting, are product management skills portable across domains and indutrries?Cheers,Ranjit
I dont know who decided for going app-only. But here is my take on it.
App only was a bold step knowing that in fashion it's important to offer the best possible view of the goods so the bigger screen, the better would be the "obvious" thing. On the other hand Myntra would definitely have noticed the rate of app adotpion was higher than that of growth on website. So these are 2 "kind of" opposing inputs to the strategy decision.
What should the Product Manager have done, was to device some well synchronized experiments get a better insight into this. The experiments could include showing messages on site as "coupon XYZ for 5% extra discount if you buy via app" and vice versa. These kind of experiments would have revealed the possibly similar results without the shock of going app-only and then back to dual mode.
If the call was of the PM, equiped with the above data, he'd have taken a much better call.
If it was not of him, the above experiment would have helped him put across his point backed with hard data.
Personally my business sense says app only is good for services which have high repeat sales from an individual. Any app installed on a phone looses its relevance if it is not utilized at least once in 15 days , services like taxi or mobile wallet, assistance for child/elderly, or grocery buying make more sense app only.
Buying other products like electronics or fasion is not a single point decision for many they check different options and has longer process of buying decision.
Although mobile has a great advantage of personalization, features like bookmarking a dress for later purchase is very important which is not very frequently used through browser.
And as stated by others here, everything should be data driven and by that i mean not just the final report on various ratios between desktop and mobile mediums.
High conversion value of mobile is also dependent on many factors and we should keep track of funnel for that.
In case of myntra , at that time various ratios between mobile and desktop showed a clear shift towards mobile and advantages like personalization , direct traffic and 'perceived' customer loyalty made management to take app only decision.
Now coming to the real question as product guy what should I have done with such proposal , I could have recommended for more test scenarios. And phase wise implementation of app only strategy. So that rollback in case of failure would be much easier.
But saying things here on what would I have done is like commenting while sitting in front of TV, what players on field could have done.
And many a times we tech guys are asked by board "Can we do this ? " and " how much time will it take? " rather than "should we do this ?".