Fab & Custora calculate the the lifetime value of an iPad (customer) | Hacker News Reader

Fab & Custora calculate the the lifetime value of an iPad (customer)

betashop.com

39 pointscpierson16 comments

Any doubts now about why Amazon is pushing the Kindle Fire for all its worth?

The OP jokes about giving all their customers an iPad - Bezos is actually taking a Billion dollar bet and doing just that...

Exactly.

Hi. Jason Goldberg, betashop, CEO of Fab here. Happy to take any questions on this and discuss further.

Kind of unrelated, but I got introduced to fab.com (and now love it) due to a friend posting a link on fb (to the dirty mermaid sheets). I was upset that I couldn't even see the product without signing up; I certainly wouldn't casually install the iPad app based on casual engagement like that.

I wonder what the correct tradeoff is for you between making it easy for new users to see products, vs. getting signups. You certainly wouldn't want to require users to install the iPad app before seeing products, since that's a huge amount of friction, but even signing up for an account is a fair bit.

Hi Jason, thanks for answering questions.

I'm curious if you analyzed your customer profile based on entry point into Fab at all? Do you see the same type buying profile (% of users with purchases/frequency of purchases) on tablet-first vs. web-first customers or are these high tablet numbers mostly a result of pre-existing web customers downloading the tablet app.

In other words, do cohorts of users signing up from a tablet actually outperform users signing up from the web, or are you just migrating users who are already engaged on the web to purchase on tablet?

We do analyze this. We are finding that users who join fab for the first time via iPad convert to purchasers 5x faster than normal.

Now that you know that this segment of customers have a higher lifetime value than non-tablet users, how do you intend to capitalize on this knowledge? I understand you can't get too specific on future strategy... but has this data changed how you intend to develop and market your mobile channel in the future?

Absolutely. I would bet we are one of the few mass market companies trying to think mObile first in terms of marketing , product, etc.

Excuse typos I'm on a plane on my iPad ;-)

Do you think that this can mostly be explained by the assumption that iPad owners are more affluent, or is there something in tablet/iPad usage patterns (maybe more casual browsing situations) that could explain part of it.

Very interesting stats in any case.

I saw that mobile users "purchased more then 2x faster", can you share the average transaction time for mobile, ipad & web? (Fab push notification goes off that my cart is expiring in 2 minutes).

Ah. By faster I meant faster time in days to first purchase and faster conversion of users overall to purchasers. We don't track speed of cart to placing order.

np, I've seen other transaction times on mobile are up to 4x faster than the web (from session start), but I have a suspicion that the immersive experience of an iPad app like Fab would actually increase average transaction time (but looking for data on it)

It would seem logical in that downloading the app it shows intent to purchase eventually and the structure of iOS allows for less distractions than browsing via the web.

If I'm using an iPad app, it occupies my entire screen and has my full attention (minus alerts that may arrive) and therefore I'm less likely to pulled away by something else (twitter stream, messages from friends, links, etc.).

Also, if I'm launching a shopping app, it's also done with intent to shop.

One possible explanation of why people with an iPad app are more engaged - speed

http://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/impatient-america-needs-f...

And an iPad app means the user has a single focus, no other tabs, no other apps, no other notifications, etc.

Corey from Custora here. Happy to answer any questions about how our product works and how we helped Fab discover these insights.

Saw similar engagement results for a client in the private-sales biz when they released their native ipad app.

One piece of data you guys aren't showing, that was relevant to our experience was % who were previous Fab.com buyers.

When we looked at the data again through that lense w found what looked more like a migration of previously strong web-buyers over to ipad.

In context of your article you note "we started to notice that iPad users behaved exceptionally differently from all other mobile users and web users."

But reframing from my own experience I think that the real story is that "your BUYERS behaved exceptionally differently", not the platform users.

Rereading your article, did I miss he point and you had already pulled previously registered from the data?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com