Babylist · 2023
Evolved Babylist from a mono-list product to a multi-list, multi-occasion platform. Led a team of 11 from discovery through launch.
Babylist's mission had expanded from serving expecting parents to supporting growing families.
I led the Wishlist initiative, a key part of the company's strategy to increase LTV.
Evolve Babylist from a single-list, single-occasion product to a multi-list, multi-occasion product.
Increase LTV (lifetime value).
70% of users say they'd be disappointed if they couldn't use Babylist for wishlists.
Zero-to-one in nine months.
1
Discovery
I initially argued against this initiative, believing there was “too much meat on the bone” left for baby registries. But our CEO pushed me to reckon with our need to increase LTV. And many users were repurposing their baby registries for other occasions. I'm a believer in productizing behavior people are already doing.
2
User Research
We couldn't assume that what worked for baby registries and showers would work for birthdays and holidays. I collaborated with a researcher on several interviews to understand: How are parents currently solving the problem of getting their children what they want or need for special occasions?
We learned that the primary tool was not other wishlists; it was the Notes app and the Photos app.
3
Shaping & Concept Testing
I gave our founding team of 4 (one designer, one iOS developer, one data scientist and myself) the guidance that whatever we built needed to be 10x better than the experience of using Notes, Photos, or Amazon to collect the gifts you want. (Borrowing from Peter Thiel’s Zero to One.)
4
The Beta Build
So we built our own photo search. It was so accurate & cool!
We could pull Google Shopping results right into the app!
It delivered on Babylist’s core value proposition “Add anything from any store”!
Oh yeah, and a basic onboarding to collect birth date.
Spoiler: We'd get a patent for this.
5
Beta Test
We ran a high-touch beta with nine parents planning a child's birthday: 6 existing Babylist users, 3 people who'd never used Babylist. I discovered we had 3 personas.
We only had fit with Evangelists. That didn't meet our bar of 70% users. We needed the Fence Sitters.
6
Back to the Drawing Board
Our remote team gathered in person for three days to solve: how might we collect a child's sizes and interests and surface those on the wishlist?
Our designer came up with a Mad Libs style onboarding to quickly — and cutely! — collect all the information needed. Users loved it!
7
Fun with Debugging
The build passed formal QA, but I wanted a realistic trial before it reached real users. Our marketing manager proposed a delightful way to QA and celebrate: have all of us (the team had expanded to eleven) create real wishlists of things we wanted, draw names, and purchase each other gifts.
8
Results
The Team
