All work

Personalized Discovery

Gopuff's app showed every shopper the same thing. Personalized Discovery was a strategy-and-execution project: define how Gopuff should approach discovery, then ship the surfaces to prove it, including reorder prompts built from a customer's own order history and location-based discovery of what's new nearby.

Role
Senior Product Manager (MBA Intern), Search & Discovery
Company
Gopuff
Timeline
2022
Contribution
Discovery strategy, product research & analytics, concept development & mockups, A/B experimentation, cross-functional requirements
The Gopuff app home screen on a phone: a search bar, quick-access category shortcuts, a voice-to-order promo, and a personalized Fresh Groceries section
The Gopuff home screen, the surface every shopper landed on, and the canvas Personalized Discovery set out to tailor to each customer.

The Challenge

One experience for every shopper

Gopuff's shopping experience was largely one-size-fits-all: the same merchandising for a brand-new user and a loyal weekly regular. That left margin on the table, and it meant repeat customers had to hunt for new items they would be willing to buy.

Underneath the surface problem was a strategy gap. Gopuff had no shared point of view on how discovery should work, and no evidence for what personalization could actually move and how to get customers to discover and purchase a larger breadth of products offered.

The Strategy

Set the discovery strategy, then prove it

I co-authored Gopuff's first PR/FAQ on discovery, pulling together competitive analysis, UX and customer research, and product analytics. It convinced senior leadership to shift the company's discovery strategy toward personalization.

I then turned that thesis into a pipeline: 12 personalization concepts, each with visual mockups and engineering and data requirement docs. Six were approved onto Gopuff's FY22–23 product roadmap.

The Solution

Personalization that promotes users branching out and discovering new product categories

Based on your last orders uses purchase history as a gateway into new product categories by suggesting relevant complimentary or similar products. This nudges a user to branch out by using relevant and personalized context, making the discovery feel natural.

New in your city and Trending in your city leverages a user's physical location to surface items newly available or trending, emulating a “shopping local” experience to explore beyond their usual cart. Every concept was validated through user A/B testing before it shipped, so launches were earned, not assumed.

Location based discovery: two Gopuff phone screens titled New in Philadelphia and Trending in Philadelphia, surfacing items newly available and breaking out near the shopper
Right place, right time: “New in Philadelphia” and “Trending in Philadelphia” tune the storefront to a shopper's location, surfacing what's newly available and breaking out nearby.

The Impact

Personalization that paid for itself

$1M+
in margin contribution from launched products
50%
of the team's annual goal, from one intern's work
12→6→3
concepts created, roadmapped, then launched
3
products made permanent fixtures in the app
1st
discovery PR/FAQ in Gopuff's history
A/B testing
validated with users before every launch

Three personalization products launched after successful A/B testing and became permanent fixtures in the Gopuff app, together driving more than $1M in margin contribution, roughly half of the team's goal for the fiscal year.

The more durable win was strategic: a single internship reframed how Gopuff thought about discovery, backed by a PR/FAQ, a validated concept pipeline, and shipped revenue, the full arc from 0–1 strategy to measurable business impact.