Our approach to Retention vs Volume dilemma!

[MohitGolecha]

Hey folks!

Its been a couple of busy quarters at Upstox building and more importantly deciding what to ship when. Starting on a bare minimum framework on the TV platform, we had a ton of items on the list to build on.
Be it scanners, advanced option chain, quick scalping window or even the most basic Custom Order Form that could enable all the product/order types that we provide on other platforms.

On this, we had solid internal debates & discussions with users, between prioritizing user retention or pursuing sheer user volume. It is a classic strategic tightrope walk!

The optimal approach that we decided to move forward was - to have a dynamic balancing act that evolves with the product’s maturity. And of course, either of the paths, things would break a few times with bugs here-and-there troubling us - but there’s no running away from it.

Let me expand on it.

What we chose to do:

1. Build the basic most important things first
   This would be fixing breaks/bugs, building widely used products/features (regardless of user’s trading style) and have things cleaned-up & streamlined.
   
   This included revamping the option chain, better alerts flow and the UI makeover!

2. Ship basic version first → Gather community/early user insights → Re-ship tuned version asap → See adoption/usage → Market/talk about the product to all users publicly
   On all the releases, we’re not just seeing how many people are using it, but more importantly focusing on how often.
   
   This has helped us majorly in terms of user satisfaction and product experience (The “Scalper Widget” has nearly 6x more retention even after week 6!). Also, I don’t know if its word-of-mouth or some natural force, we’re currently at over 34% users using it everyday! And all the marketing we’ve done till now - is just a post about it in the community. More power to you folks!

3. Zero-distractions but still add away to keep users aware of new updates/releases
   We were headstrong on day zero that there will be no distraction away from charts! That’s the whole reason why we all love the tradingview platform. Sure the platform has some limitations, but the love for clean charts supersedes it!

4. Keep at it - no matter the cost!
   Platform experience and a non-jittery flow is a top priority for us. Though providing tick-by-tick (TBT) charts along with 30 levels of market depth is something that increases feature handling by 3x on our side, we’ve made it a ground rule to not fore-go anything no matter how hard it can be to solve - a big issue, a small bug or even something that is faced by 5/6 users. We’re gonna keep at it.

What we traded off:

1. Build everything for everyone
   As much as I’ve been a trader myself and seeing other folks trading/investing, I’ve learned that every trader is unique, got their own ways and trade in their own style! Be it analysis, visual preferences or even order placing method - there exists no one rule that fits all.
   
   To solve this upto a certain extent, we built the User Settings Hub - One place for all customizations and preferences to provide flexibility to different user personas. And we’re trying to keep up with this on every new feature/release.

2. Slight issues in performance
   While order placement is as quick as it gets, we do get feedbacks regarding lagging of charts and few issues there. TBT charts on tradingview is tough. Really tough! It pushes real-time experience to the max. It does eat up CPU & internet bandwidth usage upto an extent, especially if you have the “Turbo mode” on.
   
   We’re working closely with the folks at Tradingview to make the library more robust from their end and improvise on our caching & rebuttal services.

3. Aggressive marketing on launch
   We’ve taken a “wait-for-it” approach to market things as we launch it. Quite a lot of features that we already had before our competitors did, it seemed that we’re always slow/late as we talk/market about it much later.
   
   An important thing that we try to focus on is - Reliability. And even if we might seem to be a lil slow in the market, we want it to be the right way and reliable.

This is what I mean by - a dynamic balancing act that evolves with the product's maturity. It is the route that we've taken in the so called "Retention vs Volume" dilemma.

And I would love you folks, yes the community folks to help us get better.
Product, experience, performance, or anything that you feel like - we’re not just hearing you out, but acting on things!

[DEVANG_1072163]

Appreciate upstox team hard work , dedication and overall enthusiasm towards the possitive approach in making things better. Kudos to team, keep it up and all the best.