The Client: Ecosia

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The search engine that plants trees

Ecosia is a search engine that operates as a social business and uses the revenue generated from ad clicks to plant trees in various locations worldwide where reforestation is needed most. It was founded in 2009 by Christian Kroll and is based in Berlin, Germany.

The search engine prides itself on being environmentally friendly in its operations and boasts a global user base of over 20 million people as of 2023. Additionally, Ecosia encrypts searches and does not sell user data to third parties, making it a privacy-friendly alternative to other search engines like Google.

🌍 As of April 2024, Ecosia claims to have planted more than 200 million trees since its inception in 2009.

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The Mission: Interim Product Manager

We joined Ecosia to serve as Interim Product Managers in the Journey team. We were part of a team of an Engineering Manager, several Full-Stack & Backend Developers, and a Product Designer. With the original Senior Product Manager on paternal leave and the interim Product Manager exiting, our main role was to fill the Product Management gap during this time.

The Journey team focuses on the customer lifecycle, starting from acquisition and activation. This team works closely with the Engagement team, which is responsible for retention. Both teams aim to ultimately increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

One key initiative to improve CLTV was launching User Accounts. This feature would allow Ecosia users to create accounts, enabling Ecosia to better understand and serve their needs.

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Our Main Quest: Crafting the User Accounts MVP Strategy

Launch: Onboarded Very Fast

Before we could begin execution, we needed to understand the three pillars:

• Business
  • The business case.
• Users
  • Existing user insights and pain points.
• Tech
  • Proposed solutions and their underlying hypotheses.
  • Dependencies with other teams.
  • The dynamics of the team responsible for building the solution.

To gain this understanding, we conducted in-depth interviews with the departing PM, PMs from other teams, and reviewed existing research. With this groundwork laid, we were ready to formulate the strategy for rolling out the MVP.

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Solved For The Client: Parallelized Delivery and Discovery

Context:

User Accounts offered clear business value: it would help Ecosia better understand its users and offer personalized experiences to ultimately improve user engagement and CLTV.

The challenge was incentivizing users to create accounts and to provide them value in doing so.

Initially, the first value-added use case was to support syncing across browsers. Coincidentally, the native apps team was building the desktop browser (Ecosia already had mobile browsers), and this offered the perfect opportunity to synergize with User Accounts.

However, as we identified dependencies on a cross-team roadmap, it was highlighted that coupling both launches would risk the Browser launch. Further, to validate the underlying hypotheses for User Accounts, we needed to launch at scale which would be limited by the reach of the Desktop Browser.

Rather than risking the Browser, we decided to de-prioritize syncing and went back to discovering the first value-add use case that would incentivize users to create User Accounts.

Problem:

The team was stuck between Discovery and Delivery. User Accounts had significant business value, and their development needed to be mobilized. However, without a value-add use case, we didn't know where to begin or what our release strategy would be.

To get the team moving, we needed to parallelize delivery and discovery.

Solution:

• Working backward towards the fundamental foundation (Alpha): We aligned with the team that, regardless of the value-add use case, fundamental work was needed to build User Accounts. Rather than waiting on discovery, we identified the requirements for the Alpha Release, which would be launched internally.

• Build a release and go-to-market strategy from Alpha: With the Alpha Release identified, we built a release strategy and go-to-market that included incremental steps for the core User Accounts experience and considerations for the value-added use case.

• Enable room to run Discovery in parallel: By focusing on the fundamental foundation, we kickstarted delivery and created room to invest time in running discovery. The team collectively brainstormed themes like Sustainability and ideated solutions to incentivize users to create accounts while fulfilling their desire to contribute to the planet. We performed user story mapping, created high-fidelity prototypes, and conducted user interviews to gather insights and iterate on the value-added use case.

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Solved For The Client: Tying User Accounts Success to Company OKRs

Context:

At Ecosia, the OKR planning cycle occurs every 4 months, with all team initiatives aimed at achieving desired business outcomes.

Problem:

User Accounts was a 0 to 1 initiative, and key hypotheses needed testing. We had to balance setting ambitious yet realistic Key Results (KRs) without having no target to aim at.

Solution:

We reviewed historical feature launches and found a proxy: Magic Link, a feature allowing users to ‘log in’ on other devices. We used the post-launch usage data of Magic Link as a benchmark.

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Solved For The Client: GDPR Compliance

Context:

Before User Accounts, we didn't capture any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and were limited to getting consent for Cookies.

Problem:

With User Accounts, we had to balance capturing necessary PII while ensuring user rights and delivering promised value.

Solution:

We conducted an extensive data mapping exercise to identify what data we would capture, why it was needed, and where it would be stored. With legal counsel, we determined which data required explicit consent and designed the recommended user flow for capturing that consent. Additionally, we worked with our engineering counterparts to scrutinize data security mechanisms for the data we would store versus data stored by third parties like Okta.

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Our Side Quests:

1. Sunsetting Features for Google-Friendly Brand Rollout: Ecosia entered a partnership with Google as a search provider, but a condition of this partnership was that we could not incentivize search. Sunsetting such features required close collaboration with marketing and customer support to ensure the messaging to consumers was clear, and positive, and avoided any backlash.‍
2. Supporting Marketing Campaigns for EU Choice Screen: With the EU Choice Screen, Apple and Google were required to give consumers the right to choose their default browser and search engine. While this presented a great opportunity for new users to choose Ecosia, there was also a concern about existing users churning. To address this, we launched in-app marketing campaigns to inform users about the upcoming Choice Screen and urged them to continue choosing Ecosia as their default browser and/or search engine.‍
3. Supporting Lifecycle Marketing: At Ecosia, we used Braze as a CRM. Our team supported marketing on various topics, such as optimizing credit usage and exploring the integration of Braze with User Accounts to provide a seamless view of the user journey and interactions across different devices.

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Mission Achievements: Delivered Outcomes

💡 Locked the requirements and designs for the Alpha release, enabling a clear roadmap and kicking off development with a well-defined scope.

💡 Defined the go-to-market and release strategy for User Accounts MVP, providing a 3 to 6-month development roadmap.

💡 The Choice Screen resulted in an install spike of 139% on iOS and 50% on Android. This contributed to an increase in CLV, with an attribution of incremental revenue (euros) in 6 figures.

💡 Successfully enabled adherence to the partnership with Google by sunsetting features that incentivized search, without significantly impacting user retention.