How Olist’s mobile app grew 200% in 10 months?

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Problem/Goal

In March 2019, Olist’s head of product invited me to help in the Mobile vertical. I left Catalog and joined this new team to help Olist be a mobile-first company.

Our app was already working, but it was more proof of concept than a real product. Many functionalities we had in the web weren’t in the app, which was one of the main reasons our sellers didn’t use the application. Engagement and acquisition were low and flat.

Besides that, there wasn’t a clear backlog, roadmap, and neither a team 100% focused. As the product manager, I was responsible to create the product strategy aligning other product verticals and squads such as Operations, Finanance, and Growth.

Therefore, I needed to scale up the app and coordinate together with other teams what Mobile would be working on.

Solution

To identify where we should go and what we should do, I created our roadmap and backlog. I presented and iterated many times while validating the product strategies with key stakeholders such as the head of product, other directors, and product managers from different squads.

Document on Confluence where I shared my product vision, roadmap, and backlog

I conducted researches and benchmarks to understand how other companies were positioning their apps. I downloaded, used, and wrote down my observations related to the value proposition, user journey, features, strengths, and weakness of direct and indirect competitors, besides apps that weren’t in our segment but somehow could give us some insight.
It took me two days, and I analyzed more than ten apps, such as Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Rappi, and Shopify.

Document where I wrote all the research I did of direct and indirect competitors

Document where I wrote all the research I did of apps that weren’t in our segment

With all that data, I used a software called Whimsical to connect the different researches. I used the tool as a visual guideline to share the vision, strategy, goals, milestones, and other important information with key stakeholders.

Visual document where I shared the general strategy, future seller journey, backlog, prioritization, roadmap, OKRs, and metrics

​Following our strategy and plan, I also worked and aligned different teams, such as Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. I even wrote some articles to be published on the blog to increase user acquisition.

Examples of articles I wrote

​Being the person responsible for the app, I also needed to develop a communication plan to let sellers know what they could expect from new versions of the product. I used Intercom and it was an excellent channel to interact with sellers while reading their feedback.

When sellers opened the feature to answer a buyer's question on the web app, I triggered a message to let them know they could do that on the app as well

By being a hands-on PM, I also prototyped on Figma to help other designers understand my toughts and ideas for the app.

Some prototypes I made on Figma to help in discussions with designers

Results/metrics

Before:
In March 2019, there were only two features on the app. One was to answer questions from buyers and the other was to open support tickets. Also, sellers could see the dashboard and read articles from the help center.

The first version of Olist's app

After:
Twelve months later, in March 2020, we had new features. They were to allow sellers to register new products from Olist's catalog, check financial balance, visualize and search for new orders, sign-up flow for the app to be an acquisition channel, among many others.

The new version of the app

→ Some general impacts

• Sellers in our base with the app downloaded:

Before:
In August 2019, Olist's app had in total 2102 sellers, and it corresponded 13% of the entire user base.

The first image is our seller base and the second is the number of sellers with the app

After:
In July 2020, we had 14363 sellers with the app, and it was 39% of the user base. It was a 200% growth rate if compared to August 2019.

• Feature to answer buyer’s questions

Since we implemented the event on Mixpanel, more than 91k questions were answered, and until June 2020, the questions answered on the app was 12% of the total.

• Quantity of stock and price edited on the app

More than 30k products had their price or stock changed once we implemented this event on Mixpanel and more than 3k products became competitive because of the app.

• Quantity of products registered on the app

From February 2020 to June 2020, more than 3k products were registered on the app generating more than 226k reais in GMV.

Lessons Learned

• Being a product manager means you are a problem solver. No matter the challenge, you will need to lead the way and do whatever it takes to achieve the objectives.
• Knowing how to use a design tool to wireframe or prototype can help you share your vision. You shouldn’t be a pro, but learning the basics will support your communication with designers.