Case Study 3 - Root Cause Analysis - E-commerce App Cart Additions 15% declined

Flipkart observed a ~15% decline in “cart additions” (users adding items to their cart) over the last three days, primarily on the mobile app.

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Diagnostic Approach by Candidate:

1. Clarification of Metrics:

• Ensured clear definition of “cart additions.”

• Confirmed the issue is specific to the mobile app, not the website.

2. Initial Checks:

• Analytics tools were functioning normally—no logging issues.

• Competition, campaigns, and sales events didn’t indicate any correlation.

• No noticeable decline among specific user segments or locations.

3. App-Specific Investigation:

• Inquired about recent app updates. Flipkart had indeed pushed major updates on both Android and iOS, especially focused on improving the checkout flow.

• Issue was observed only on Android, not iOS.

4. Bug Reports:

• Post-update, there was a spike in bug reports, particularly related to payment and checkout issues.

5. User Journey Deep Dive:

• Hypothesized that the issue could be in the transition from viewing a product to adding it to the cart.

• Explored visibility and functionality of the “Add to Cart” button on the product listing pages.

• Suggested checking event logging to trace the user action flow—whether users were clicking “Add to Cart” and if the event was successfully registering.

6. Key Insight:

• Data showed no cart additions on a specific Android app version, strongly suggesting the bug was introduced in that release.

• Candidate concluded the likely issue lies with the Add to Cart functionality being broken or not triggering the backend event correctly.

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Resolution Direction:

Candidate recommended deep event flow analysis on the Android app version to confirm where the “Add to Cart” interaction is breaking. The Interviewer confirmed this diagnosis as accurate.

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Takeaway:

A structured approach—starting from metric definition, segmentation, external/internal changes, and finally drilling into the app flow—helped accurately identify that a recent Android app update likely broke the cart addition functionality.

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