01Onboarding
Newcomers told us which kinds of art and objects they collected, and that shaped their entire experience.
Sotheby’s sold $7.3 billion of art and objects in 2021, and its apps let collectors browse and bid from all over the world. Over two years, I helped turn the apps from an afterthought into the auction house’s most important products. Downloads rose 73%, and even with fewer than 5% of customers, they drove more online bids than any other channel.
Overview
How we evolved
When I joined Sotheby’s, the mobile apps crashed often and nobody could tell why or how to fix them. Opening them took between 4 and 10 seconds, which was incredibly painful when an auction was seconds from closing. And checking on users’ bids meant digging through several screens and wasted time and lost art. We fixed it all.
Buyers told us they were tired of hunting in the app for both new items that matched their taste, and also auctions they were already participating in. So the moment they signed up, we asked them to pick the kinds of pieces they collected. Their answers built a home feed of items chosen specifically for them, and every week an alert pointed them to new arrivals. When something caught their eye and they started bidding, it stayed front and center on the home screen, so they always knew whether they were winning.
One survey response summed it up: “This is the best app of all auction houses.”
What we built
For collectors and bidders
02Personalized feeds
We picked fresh items for each person, based on their interests and what they’d browsed or bid on.
- 67%of users engaged
- +24%weekly retention
Results: 67% of users engaged and weekly retention rose 24%.
03Friday alerts
Nobody wanted to hunt for pieces that matched their taste, so we started sending alerts every Friday.
- +12%daily visitors on Fridays
- +8%items viewed per session
Results: 12% more daily visitors on Fridays and 8% more items viewed per session.
04My bids
Active bids were hard to find. We moved them front and center, so buyers never missed being outbid.
- 4 secondsfaster to place a bid
Result: 4 seconds faster to place a bid.
05Auction calendar
We added bigger images, local times and filters to the calendar, making it easier to discover new auctions.
- +33%conversion from calendar to auction
Result: a 33% lift in conversion from calendar to auction.
06Browse by Topic
Marketing needed to promote auctions and objects on their own schedule, so we built sections their team could arrange themselves, based on how our users searched for objects.
- +7%items viewed per user per session
Result: 7% more items viewed per user per session.
How we got there
Behind the scenes
- Listening to buyers
We asked them what they needed, and their answers shaped what we built.
- Personalization
We built a system that learned each person’s taste from their sign-up picks and what they browsed and bid on, then put it to work in their home feed and weekly alerts.
- Sentry
We replaced our old bug tracker with Sentry, so we could see where and why crashes happened and fix problems before users reported them.
- A faster launch
The apps checked for updates on the opening screen, which slowed every launch. We moved that check to the background, and load time dropped from 4–10 seconds to about 2.5.
- Mixpanel and Optimizely
We added Mixpanel to track what people actually did in the apps, and Optimizely to run A/B tests. Until then, nobody had studied that behavior.
Results
Two years later
+73% downloadsOver two years
#1 source of online bidsFrom fewer than 5% of customers
Up to 4× faster launch4–10 seconds → 2.5 to open
+7% items viewedPer user per session, from Browse by Topic