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Mobile web is not (just) a technical challenge
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Lara Hogan
June 20, 2014
Technology
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2.8k
Mobile web is not (just) a technical challenge
Lara Hogan
June 20, 2014
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Transcript
l a r a h o g a n .
me / c u l t u r e / @l a r a _ h o g a n
None
Engineering Teams at Etsy • Feature Teams • Listing page
• Seller tools • Checkout • Infrastructure Teams • Performance • Data engineering • Autobots (testing)
Engineering Teams at Etsy • Infrastructure Teams • Performance •
Data engineering • Autobots (testing) • Feature Teams • Listing page • Seller tools • Checkout
• Feature Teams • Listing page • Seller tools •
Checkout • Mobile Web spun
None
User agent sniffer delivers different templates
No mobile subdomain
One team was responsible for mobilizing everything
Worked okay... for a while.
Everyone hates duplicate code templates/! templates/mobile/ assets/js/! assets/js/mobile/ assets/css/! assets/css/mobile/
We began to explore native development
“Everyone at Etsy should be doing mobile”
... so then no more mobile web work happened for
a year.
It was a large technical hurdle
Device sizes and operating systems grew more fragmented
mobile web caring shipping teaching }
Options
1. Give up
Source: StatCounter Global Stats, 6/14 % of Internet Traffic
1. Give up 2. Appoint mobile web cops/janitors
In 2013, we appointed a new Mobile Web Team...
... but feature teams know how their feature should work
on mobile.
1. Give up 2. Appoint mobile web cops/janitors 3. Implement
technical solutions
We built tools to make it easy to mobilize features...
... but feature teams still weren’t mobilizing anything.
1. Give up 2. Appoint mobile web cops/janitors 3. Implement
technical solutions 4. Enact culture change
We were trying to solve a cultural problem with just
technology.
• Infrastructure Teams • Performance • Data engineering • Autobots
(testing) • Mobile Web • Feature Teams • Listing page • Seller tools • Checkout
• Infrastructure Teams • Data engineering • Autobots (testing) •
Mobile Web got
Mobile Web’s parallel universe: Performance at Etsy
Educated coworkers
None
clear
None
+160kb
Incentivized coworkers
None
whoa!
Developers fixed it
whoa,
Performance hero
Performance hero
Empowered coworkers
People began to do performance caring shipping teaching }
stan: hey bucky perf just jumped with this deploy bucky:
looking now stan stan: dashboards.etsycorp.com/ deploy.php#pageperf...
Yash: great catch stan, thanks for vigilance ross: thanks for
seeing something & saying something bucky: stan
None of these people are on the performance team.
Solving mobile web’s culture problem
Educating coworkers
Lunch & Learn: Mobile Web Performance
Workshop: How to Test on Mobile
Lunch & Learn: Designing for Touch
Incentivizing coworkers
None
None
None
Mobile Web Hack Week
Empowering coworkers
“We are a mobile-first company.” - Chad Dickerson, Etsy CEO
in a company meeting
Feature teams began to care, ship, and teach
“Remember this win on desktop, where we added some light
copy changes and saw a lift in conversion? As promised, we're running this experiment on mobile web...” (actual
None
“Does this work on mobile? Absolutely! ... We found that
a one-template approach for this page was much better for both user experience and operational overhead...” (another
None
“...we’ve mobilized the Interactions feature in the Activity Feed, which
wasn’t previously mobilized.” (yet
None
These are our success metrics. caring shipping teaching }
Which of these are you missing? caring shipping teaching }
culture technology &
culture technology &