CX Strategic Knowledge · Quality & Research
The iphone filter bug case
Pageviews tripled because filters were broken. Rising engagement can be a symptom of failure, not success.
iPhone product-list pageviews tripled and the team celebrated the new design. The truth: filter and sort were broken on iPhones, forcing users to browse endlessly. The wealthiest customers were harmed for twelve months, and fixing one bug outearned an entire CRO team.
iPhone product-list pageviews tripled. The team read it as love for the new design. The correct diagnosis: filter and sort were broken on iPhones, so users were forced to browse endlessly through pages they could not narrow. The metric went up because the experience went down.
The damage concentrated on the best customers. The wealthiest users were iPhone users, and for twelve months they could not filter products. When the bug was finally fixed, that single repair generated more revenue than the entire conversion optimization team.
Fixing friction often outperforms optimization.
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Reading about the iphone filter bug case is one thing. Seeing where it applies in your journey is the useful part.