Casey Winters, the former product lead for the growth team at Pinterest and advisor to multiple growth teams at other companies, talks about how growth teams came to be, how they operate at scale, how the user experience challenges are different, and some effective experiments on specific channels he's seen in his career.

1. How growth teams are
revolutionizing UX and
product development
Casey Winters

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5. 8
Casey Winters
Former Product Lead on the Growth Team, Pinterest
Casey Winters has been working on growing technology companies for over a
decade and now advises tech companies on their growth strategies. Prior to
advising, Casey spent the last three years leading growth product efforts at
Pinterest, helping the company grow to over 150 million monthly active users.
Prior to Pinterest, Casey was the first marketer at Grubhub, an online food
delivery service, helping the company grow from three cities to over 500.
@onecaseman
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6. Why Growth Teams are
Revolutionizing UX and Product
Development
CASEY WINTERS
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

7. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
The purpose of a “growth” team
1. Scale usage of a product which has product market fit
2. Build a playbook on how to do 1

8. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
So why growth teams?
Why not marketing teams?
• The biggest growth drivers tend to come from within the
product
• Marketing teams don’t have access or expertise in changing the
product

9. Why is growth different from traditional
product development & UX?
• Most product teams are built to create value or improve
value provided to customers
• Growth teams focus on connecting more people to the
existing value of a product
• This requires a different mindset that is more iterative and
analytical than traditional product development
– More experiments or “shots on goal”
• It also requires teams to balance business value and user
value much more directly
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

10. What does a growth team look
like at scale?
• Sub-teams devoted to key areas, usually around parts
of the funnel
• Carved off real estate from core product
for swim lanes
• Special teams start to emerge at larger companies focused
on key friction areas without swim lanes
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

11. What does team structure look like?
Dedicated PM, designers, engineers, analysts, researchers,
marketers, operations for each sub-team
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

12. SEO Friendly Landing Pages
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

13. SEO Friendly Landing Pages
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

14. But conversion was still terrible…
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

15. Where are people actually
landing on your service?
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

16. Once you find a winning idea, iterate
on that idea until you can’t anymore.
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

17. What do I get if I do what you want?
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

18. Clear Value Propositions
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

19. The Mobile Equation
• Mobile signup vs. App install
• Do an AB test
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

20. App Interstitial Experiment Frenzy
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

21. Optimizing further down
the mobile funnel
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

22. What about when they
return to their browser?
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

23. Putting it all together…
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

24. What about when they open the app?
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

25. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
Let’s go back to signup

26. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
Going multi-step

27. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
Going multi-step

28. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
Optimizing multi-step login

29. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
Let’s go back to signup

30. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
Optimizing multi-step login

31. Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com
Let’s go back to signup

32. Let’s go back to signup
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

33. Optimizing Personalized Content
• Ask people which topics they’re
interested in
• Customize these with any data
you have on the user
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

34. Optimizing Onboarding and Education
• Get people to the core value your
product provides as fast as possible
(but not faster)
• Don’t be afraid to educate
(contextually)
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

35. Simplifying Further
• We saw in research we were educating
on too many things, and users were
getting lost
• We made a short list of critical elements
of the product to create value (not
explain how it works!), and removed
everything else
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

36. Email User Experience
• Test manually, then automate
and personalize
• Stop sending email like a
marketer. Send email like a
personal assistant
– Right content
– Right time
– Right amount
• Subject lines and calls to action
matter; design doesn't as much
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

37. Notifications & Badging
• Start with transactional, and take baby
steps to test other types of messages
• Notifications are hard to unsubscribe
from, so people will just delete your app
• Copy matters, as does landing experience
• Badging is severely under-utilized,
especially on Android
• Pinterest built a completely new
experience to leverage badging and
notification landing pages
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

38. Loyalty/Engagement Programs
These programs should be profit drivers not cost centers, unless
building a moat
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

39. Find your bucket to focus on
• Apartments.com was definitely
infrequent, non-loyal
• For Grubhub, we had to figure
out biggest opportunity
• Yummy Rummy
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com

40. Referrals
• Need a strong value proposition for sharing (generally
money or a better product experience for them if friend
joins)
• Need to understand if one to one or mass referrals make
sense for your business
Casey Winters | @onecaseman | caseyaccidental.com