Despite the push for mobile-first design, Shutterfly observes a clear behavioral divide. Customers use the mobile app for simple, quick products like prints and for uploading photos. However, they migrate to desktop for complex, time-intensive projects like photo books, demonstrating that different platforms serve distinct purposes in the customer journey.
Beyond data analysis, Shutterfly's Director of Web Analytics envisions AI's primary role as a creator's assistant. For complex products like photo books that can take 30 hours to build, AI can drastically reduce customer effort by intelligently sorting photos and suggesting layouts. This makes high-value products more accessible to a broader audience.
Users frequently switch between mobile and web, especially for complex tasks. Shutterfly discovered that differing experiences caused user friction. By using analytics to identify these "stuck" points, they aligned the mobile app and site experiences, creating a more seamless journey for customers building complex products like photo books.
When customers invest significant time in a product, like a 30-hour photo book, tracking isolated events is insufficient. Shutterfly adopts a user-based data model to track behavior across multiple sessions and devices, focusing on critical milestones like "project start" rather than just individual clicks.