Transcript: From Granny to Evgeny: Building Data-Driven Product at Wix

Eyal David: [00:00] Hey friends, this is Eyal — you've reached Product Builder, where you can listen to the most interesting product conversations. This time our guest is Bati from Wix, a highly experienced product person — smart and funny — who shares tons of fascinating stories and insights, and talks a lot about data. Bati also tells us about the meaningful stops in her career. I found it really fascinating. And before we start — if you enjoy listening to the podcast, rate us five stars on Spotify. It gives me great feedback that the podcast is providing you value, and it would make me really happy. So, let's go — hi Bati, how's it going?

Betty Antebi: [00:37] Excellent — what fun. How was the way here? Not easy, not easy. Well, that's reality.

Eyal David: [00:44] So with us is Bati, who comes from Wix, serving as Head of Product of Analytics, right?

Betty Antebi: [00:51] Actually no — five days ago I moved to App Market. Yay, mabrouk, congratulations. Thank you so much, good luck with it.

Eyal David: [00:57] So Bati, how many years have you been at Wix? Almost six. Wow — and how many areas have you been through already?

Betty Antebi: [01:04] You're right. So I moved from the Editor group to the Analytics group, and now I'm in App Market.

Eyal David: [01:11] Wow, so I assume you'll be in App Market for a few more days. So let's talk more about Analytics. Tell us a bit — what does the Analytics department in Product at Wix actually do? Sure, so Wix Analytics is essentially a product

Betty Antebi: [01:27] that gives the user insights about the visitors to their site. Okay — where they come from, what their top selling item is, which funnel they go through, where they drop off, how many users they have now in real time, how they're doing against themselves, meaning, how their sales compare to a month ago and how they compare against their industry. So you can think of someone who has a flower shop in Tel Aviv — how they compare to the rest of the flower shops in Tel Aviv in terms of their sales, in terms of the people who come to their site, and so on.

Eyal David: [01:55] Amazing. So there's a benchmark — now I understand, because I kept having in my head, okay, there's Google Analytics, which is probably more for the advanced user, but you actually provide something more focused around the store, and you also provide, from Wix's data, essentially some kind of industry benchmark. Amazing. And — do you do this regardless of whether I have an e-commerce store

Betty Antebi: [02:15] or a brochure site? How does it work? So broadly, we work by business category, okay? We talk about what type of business you are — whether it's in the world of service, like bookings and so on, as you said, whether it's an e-commerce store, and if it's an e-commerce store, then in what field, okay? We have a very smart data-science model that knows how to find sites similar to yours, and based on that, give the insights. Now, the insights don't just come for no reason — I don't come and tell you, oh, your sales dropped 30%, what a bummer. I tell you what you need to do to increase sales — I help you move forward

Eyal David: [02:47] along your journey to becoming a successful site. It's funny — you know who actually does this, Shopify. Yes, so they really do have insights, and it's totally fine, but they also take ownership over your checkout page, and you can't change it, because they know what works best. Are you also thinking —

Betty Antebi: [03:03] are you going at some point in a direction like that, of locking some area and maximizing it? I think that's more a question for the verticals at Wix, okay? So Wix is built — you probably already know this — from companies and guilds, and there's a very large group called Wix Stores, which is essentially a solution product, a business solution that you embed in your site, and that's a question — I think we're actually heading to very open places. We open up our sites to developers and to apps too. If I'm talking about App Market and what we do there, we do actually think open; that said, we do produce templates that already have things in them. We like to say — internally, not very politically correct — but that at Wix you can build a site, like, from granny to Evgeny. Like, grandma can build a site in the ADI editor, which is the simplest, and the developer can build whatever they want on top of the platform, where Evgeny puts in code. Exactly. And why this open approach, actually? Because Wix really championed it from the start — why continue with it today? I think we understand that we have all kinds of types of users, and we can't lock them into only the Wix solutions. There are users it suits, like novices, and we also have partners, and we also have a B2B solution for enterprise, and each of them has a slightly different need, and by opening up the system, you enable those solutions to be built for them. We're now advancing to a world of

Eyal David: [04:30] AI, of consumer AI, and then we're actually moving to a place where I don't get search results, I get something very distilled. The same goes — I also think it'll go in the direction of site building too — I'll get something very distilled built for me by AI, or I'll expect to get something very distilled and not have to start now, I think, moving things around and essentially

Betty Antebi: [04:52] getting all that freedom. So how do you look at that? Nice. So I think, first of all, you know, this is what's called the most amazing era in the worlds of AI, right? Just as we started working. We're super on it, let's put it that way, okay? I think that today we, the Editor product, okay, knows how to give a template that's completely, like, AI-based, okay? It's called Site Generator, we essentially inject content, images, and so on, based on what the user says. The panel is very conversational, and then you land inside the Editor. Now, the smart part is, on one hand, to generate that same site that's, like, tailored to the user's needs, but also to let them edit the small things, because in the end users do want a bit of control, right? Suddenly I don't want this thing, I don't want that, or now it's perfect. So we want to bring them to the best starting point possible — especially the DIY user, who we know this isn't their bread and butter, they don't build sites day to day —

Eyal David: [05:50] and bring them quickly into the worlds of premium. So, first of all, it's clear you've really been through the Editor too during your journey at Wix. Editors, yes. Editors. So maybe you'll actually tell us about that a bit later. And the second thing is that I know you aggregated — hmm, what's it called — it's essentially your partners, who essentially save the effort of building the site. Is that something you

Betty Antebi: [06:14] are responsible for maintaining? How does it work? Okay. So there really is the world of DIY, okay, where you build a site for yourself, and there's the world of partners. Partners, as it sounds, okay, Wix partners — it's essentially a kind of thing called do-it-for-me, right? They build a site for some client, they build a lot of sites, and we're in a super close relationship with them. Now, they can decide where they want to start from. Today partners have two products they can work with, and a more advanced editor called Studio, which is a responsive editor, pixel-perfect, fluidity — what we call Stunning on every device. You create a site and it looks amazing on every device, because you have fluidity capabilities and breakpoints, and also behind the scenes there's a whole world of workspace, of where that same partner works, with their templates, with, you know, all kinds of tools to help them manage it at scale. So the worlds go side by side — meaning, there are the DIY users, there are the partner users, and partners indeed

Eyal David: [07:19] build sites for other users. I didn't want to interrupt — just, fluidity and breakpoints, that's essentially about stretching and adapting

Betty Antebi: [07:27] the layout to the different devices. Probably when working with templates it's easier. That too, but I'd say that actually, in these cases, Studio Editor is intended for partners who are also designers; many of them actually love to start from a blank page, and there's this whole topic of the solutions, of how you let them design once, start from some clean canvas on desktop that trickles down all the way to tablet and mobile, and then they'll come and make the needed adjustments so it holds up the way they want. Meaning, this topic of pixel-perfect and a stunning site — that you build the site and afterward it really looks the way you imagined —

Eyal David: [08:04] is something very, very significant and important, like, for us. Amazing. Okay, you're hiring now, right?

Betty Antebi: [08:10] I mentioned it over coffee earlier. We're always hiring, right. I'd say we have student programs running now, which is maybe an amazing way, maybe the most amazing way, to get into the worlds of product management. So the product student program is in full swing. In my view, Wix is really the best school for product management, both in terms of the products we work on, and at the level of impact — Wix has over 230 million users, so anything you do, you can run a quick A/B on it and see what happens, it's amazing. So we have the product student program, which is really in interviews now, and we have a student program opening today, May 22, for developers, essentially intended for computer-science students in their final year. It's really a great way to get into, you know, the industry.

Eyal David: [08:57] And since we've touched on it — maybe you can tell us: the people you hire, the ones you look for, what are the skills you think are the most

Betty Antebi: [09:05] cardinal? So I'd say, you know, it all starts with ownership, right? It's not for nothing they say product owner, and so on. It all starts with ownership — essentially with your ability to hold this whole thing, to manage people, as they say in the army, without stripes on your shoulders, right? You're not their direct manager, and you still need to move this boat, keep everyone updated, explain why we're doing what we're doing. And for that, in my view, you really need interpersonal abilities, let's call them, very, very strong communication abilities, because there's always something to communicate, okay? And also the ability, like, to understand the other side is super important. So communication, in my view, is one of the things that are a must, and ownership also goes without saying — it's like the basis for this whole thing. Can you expand a bit on ownership? Yes, so by ownership I mean that in the end, it's true there's a team or squad working on some product, but the responsibility is yours. If you don't hit the deadline with the product, or if it's shit, for that matter — sorry, excuse my French — in the end it's your responsibility. Or it's fucking simple. Or, exactly, like, in the end, you shipped something, now it didn't make an impact, you need to step back for a moment, understand what happened there, where the mistake in the research was, because we really love to say, inside Wix, that you need to know why you're doing what you're doing. We have a very... urban legend... That's great, you have tons of catchphrases. Yes, yes, the truth is... like, I give the Product Evolution lecture to new employees in the organization. And within this thing there's, like, why we do what we do. And we talk about the evolution of Wix, okay? Like, how we got from here to there, and so on. And it's true that at every major decision junction, there's this explanation. Why you're doing what you're doing. And that connects a lot to this world of research — meaning, you need to, like, understand well what your hypothesis is, why you think it'll have an effect, who it'll affect, who the user behind this thing is. And what I started to say — the legend at Wix is that even the founders who sat, the founding fathers, sat and thought about what the product would be that they'd make in the startup — they actually envisioned a different product. They came to make a site... I don't remember, but they went, like, wanted to make some kind of brochure site, and then they understood there's no easy way to build sites, and made a mental shift, and said, okay, this is what we need to build, that everyone can create a site. And I really feel that today we're at that place.

Eyal David: [11:35] So okay, so you talked about

Betty Antebi: [11:39] something else? Yes, I'd say, A, creativity, okay, bringing ideas, bringing innovation, like, into the conversation. If we look, say, at a product like GenAI, okay, then essentially the first product in the worlds of GenAI happened in the Editor — Content Injection — and it came to solve a problem, okay, it came to solve the problem that writing content for DIY users is hard. It's a problem, important to note, both for Wix as a company,

Eyal David: [12:08] and essentially for whoever builds the site, because if there's difficulty in building the site and adding content, then the site won't go live, and it'll work less well, and then there's less chance, essentially,

Betty Antebi: [12:15] that your goals get realized. Right, exactly. Think about it this way: we have some journey — the user comes, okay, I'll build a site for my restaurant, enters, goes through some panel, arrives at the Editor, and then there's this, I'm a paragraph, okay, what next? What do I do now? Hard. Okay? We've all been there. Totally. And then our understanding that writing content is hard transitions to us starting to look for solutions — meaning, how can we help them. When was this, roughly? I think about two years ago. Someone on my team picked up the gauntlet, and we started examining all kinds of things. We had something internal in the organization, a team of content, part of the Editor called ADI, which really had tons and tons of content by business category, and we could offer all kinds of things, but it wasn't really, like — it was tailored more or less, like it was tailored but also generic, okay, this is a flower shop, so images of flowers, but you know, not exactly. Stocky. Exactly. And what happened afterward is that it essentially came out of some research — like, first of all he talked to users, of course, we're user-obsessed at our company, tons of user interviews, everyone talked about it, listen, it's hard for us. We went, checked the numbers, saw that the time to premium is really, really long, part of it because of this world of content writing, and then he went, got himself... okay, there are all kinds of tools here, options, okay, and we're talking here before ChatGPT, okay? And it was actually amazing, because we connected to a relatively young model from OpenAI, and the results were amazing, okay, essentially, instead of I'm a paragraph, we enabled giving a bit of content, a bit of information, like, about what they want to put in this paragraph, it comes with the paragraph, we put the content in, and voilà, they have a site. Now, it started very, very small, then it grew and grew, injection into sections, injection into sites — but it started very, very small, with the aim of solving a real problem. Now, super

Eyal David: [14:14] creative, okay? But you could have said, okay, let's stick with this content that comes from there — but you went and looked for solutions, and what's happening now, like, in the industry, and what's new, in innovation, that we can offer. It was, like, a very, very creative solution for that period, definitely. And what

Betty Antebi: [14:30] happened is that essentially we could — because we started working on it at an early stage — we could come out very fast, after the... after there was the boom. After there was the boom,

Eyal David: [14:36] exactly, of ChatGPT. Indeed. So, it's also important to say that it wasn't just creative, it was creative in service of the business goal there is, essentially, as you said, your KPI was Time to Premium, right? Right. Or Time to Launch — how does it work? Like, is it

Betty Antebi: [14:52] Time to Ready, Ready Site? When I hit Publish, essentially. Yes, but you can hit Publish many times within your journey. The first Publish, no? So not exactly, because there's time between the First Publish, and there's what we call Meaningful Publish — sometimes you hit Publish, and then you just want to see how it looks for a moment, do a Preview, look on your phone at how the site looks. I see I have a Preview, that's it, I don't have a Publish. Like, it's a step along the way, right? Like, I mean. A step along the way — so you can do Preview inside the Editor, see how it looks, you can do Publish, and then go to the Live Site and see how it really looks, on your computer or phone, and so on. So a lot of users do, at first, okay? There's what we call Meaningful Publish, which is really already approaching the release, and we have a way, a more accurate model, that understands when the site is really ready. Oh, amazing, you don't rely on the user. We rely on them 100%, and you know, we — because we have so much data — at every moment know when the site is 80% ready and so on, and the goal was really to push them to that zone where they'd be more ready, faster, and of course convert. Amazing. So let's just —

Eyal David: [15:53] my point was just, essentially, that it came out of some KPI that's broad, but what's the KPI you attached to that specific move? Because there's something in the middle here, right? You're right. Maybe it's the readiness of the site, or?

Betty Antebi: [16:09] I think it was site readiness, and yes, we tried to quantify it — meaning, we tried to say what the time to premium is, how long it takes them, and if we shorten it a bit, how much that essentially brings us in dollars, you know, like, how much, what the significance is. Wow, that's amazing, in companies

Eyal David: [16:27] of this kind. And you also touched on it earlier, you said something in passing, like, hey, yes, we run A/B tests, and we know very fast essentially whether it's right or left, whether it's go or no-go. That's something that in companies in SaaS, it's so different, right? Because it's so hard to measure success, okay, there's essentially — especially if I work with enterprises, right? Then there are contracts I close once a year, once a quarter, and until then, no matter what I deliver, like, the product can't be measured directly, essentially, on the dollar impact of the thing. Right, versus

Betty Antebi: [17:02] essentially companies that run tests, and know exactly, essentially, how to answer that. Right — but you know, we also have a world of enterprise, and as you say, it's the contract, it's the contract renewal, it's the feature usage. You made a product, they used it,

Eyal David: [17:15] that's the success. Yes, but I echo and praise what you're saying, that there's a very fast product, and that's actually, if you're, like, considering going to start in product somewhere,

Betty Antebi: [17:22] it's an excellent school for product, actually, from this house. Unequivocally, unequivocally. A, I can say about myself, I moved from a startup to Wix. At the startup we had, you know, about 200 customers, so it's very, very different, the country's different too, but the amount of data is insane, and that's part of what drew me — I said, there's so much data, there's so many things we can do, and then it was, in the worlds of AI, even before there was, you know, all the GenAI, and the thing was, it's so much more, it makes AI accessible, like, essentially, to lots and lots of startups. So it was, wow, what can I do with this. And I'll also say, this fast feedback — that you work on something, you do the release, that you, like, sit with R&D, you send this baby out into the world, and within two weeks you already know what its impact is, what it moved, where it moved, whether you moved the needle or not, and then you go back, as they say, to the drawing board, and redefine things. And that maybe also brings us back to your first point, about the owner, why it's so important, because every fucking thing you do costs tons of money, because it touches, meets tons of users. So, is there another skill you want to mention? I think — and we touched on it a bit — this matter of being open to different solutions, and also thinking about several solutions. When we work today, we think about, like, we think a lot about the problem space, do user research, talk to users, look at the data and so on and so on, and then comes the solutions stage, and in the solutions stage there can be tons of ideas, by the way, not always from the product manager — sometimes from R&D, sometimes, like, from UX. There can be all kinds of ways to solve the problem, and you may need to be very, very open to others' ideas, and really look and make, you know, the informed decision about which direction we're going, and in squads it's very much felt, because in a squad like that the whole team works toward the goal, and as we talked about earlier, part of the product manager's role is also to be the lighthouse — meaning, constantly saying, we're doing this, why we're doing it, which direction we're going, constantly communicating it, so everyone understands why we're doing what we're doing — connects to what we talked about earlier.

Eyal David: [19:26] That's it. It also came up in a conversation with Itai Nof from Wix, and I think what I'm starting to understand is that in general, the employees at Wix are very product-oriented, which isn't something so common at many companies. Right, the company is a product company,

Betty Antebi: [19:39] I'd say there's very great transparency — meaning, management shares the plans with us, okay? The strategy document, it's very, very open, and when we, you know, talk and also train employees, we say, why are we doing what we're doing? For whom are we doing it, and how does it connect — tens of light-years from the bigger plan, it's a mistake, like, something there is wrong. So there's a lot of room to challenge, like, there's no hierarchy, a less bureaucratic organization, let's call it, and therefore, you know, a developer can come and say, yes, but I don't understand, why are we doing this? And then within this thing, that's also one of the product manager's jobs — to bring, like, the whole team into the problem, here's the point, it's why we're doing this, and it connects, like, to the bigger plan. So I said earlier, and I'm saying now too, lots and lots of communication, it's something you deal with all the time. So probably also — we talked about this, I think, at some moment — that there's also a matter of ego here, that the less ego the better, because you want to reach the best solution, the most suitable one. And you actually came from the army — you came from the army, you did the army, I'm an Atuda graduate, they say that once you're an Atuda graduate,

Eyal David: [20:47] it stays with you forever. Exactly. And you did really interesting things there — we can touch on that, in Mamram, essentially, but there was a moment when you were a consultant, and afterward you were even an entrepreneur, you had a startup, you moved to Retalix, where you essentially became product, right? Yes, there essentially... or at the startup, essentially. No, actually...

Betty Antebi: [21:08] Look, what is product management, really? It seems to me a very philosophical question, but we can say it's been around for many, many years, okay? It's something that was built — it feels to me that... for me personally, it feels to me like some combination of the world of systems analysis and project management, from which something was created, called product management. So in the army, we worked waterfall back then, it was something completely different. Really, I assisted there on a SAP implementation, on an IDF ERP project, and what did we do? We took SAP's off-the-shelf product, tried to adapt it to the army's needs, and where we couldn't, we went and developed an extension in ABAP. Similarly, that's also what Retalix did, okay? You mentioned in the middle there that I was a consultant — I was a consultant, and really at some stage, I decided I want to be part of the company. Wait, you were a consultant for whom? I was a consultant at Given Imaging, in the worlds of SAP, so I'd come twice a week to Given, do customization, work on specification documents, like a worker there a bit with R&D, and so there was a really big SAP project in maintenance, and I'd come there twice a week, like doing project work, but in effect I wasn't part of the company — rather I came and did what they asked, let's put it that way. And it was really important to me, like, to be part of the company, and to be connected, like, to the strategy and all the things being done and so on. And there really was some position at Retalix, at the time, of product owner, and I really remember it, because it was — actually it's interesting — it was a concentrated day of selections, okay? It started with 200 people, they came, entered a room, they gave us some test, we did the test, went out to lunch, after lunch they said, who advanced to the next stage? Like that. A competition like that. And I'll tell you, it was just, like, so efficient, because by the end of the day, you already knew what was happening. Like, I'm in, I'm out. Like, I got a contract or not. Whereas sometimes, you know, product processes — product tends to drag on, you do an idea here, and then another idea, and then a take-home exercise, sometimes it can drag on. So there was something very, very efficient in it, and that's how, like, really, I came and entered Retalix, into the role of product owner, and then they already called it product. But I'd say owner, in the sense that you're part of the R&D team, and it's very inbound, okay? There's not a lot of marketing there, you're not inside that thing. Retalix. Right, Retalix. And my first role as a real product manager was actually at Bidalgo, the startup I worked at, where I arrived as the second product person, and together with my manager, we built the department. It's such a Cinderella story — 35 employees above a garage in Ramat Gan, on the stock exchange, and the company grew and grew, branches were added around the world, and in the end it was sold to IronSource.

Eyal David: [23:41] Wow, so pumped up all the way — I love how it closes the story. Yes. And they were sold to IronSource, and now essentially IronSource is public, right?

Betty Antebi: [23:49] Right. So that way I hope you had a part... we made a bit of money, but let's say it's, you know, not life-changing money. I like to say it's jewelry money. Like, I treated myself. That's what we say at Wix. Amazing. And essentially from Bidalgo you moved to Wix. From Bidalgo I moved to Wix, right. Essentially my last role at Bidalgo was Director of Product, a product called Bidalgo AI. So a bit about Bidalgo — Bidalgo stands for bidding algorithm. The company dealt in the worlds of ad-tech, campaign management; the company was a Facebook partner, Google, Snapchat, TikTok, and so on. And we built a product that lets that campaign manager give the assets — meaning the images, the texts — and manage, according to their budget and goals, the whole world of campaign management. We shut down ads based on prediction models, from the data science, that we understood weren't going to succeed. We understood which winning elements there are across all the images, so they could, like, put out new images and new assets. And we essentially helped campaign managers manage better through the tool. To Wix — I was really very drawn to the world of more data, and how we make users' lives better, with AI and through data. And I came into Wix to do AI within the worlds of ADI. Oh, you went into ADI. I went into ADI, yes. My first role at Wix was product manager on the ADI team. ADI stands for Artificial Design Intelligence. It was really an editor for the novice user, that essentially enabled anyone. What I said earlier — a journey. So that was in 2018, yes. And there within Wix I rolled along — I got to work on two editors, part of the effort of Editor X as well, what we talked about earlier, Responsive Editor, and also Editor 2, which essentially took all the good of ADI,

Eyal David: [25:43] and brought it into the Classic Editor. Wow, ADI, I suddenly had a flashback — you'd literally go in, write your brands, or the site, or the, sorry, some social page of yours, or something like that, you didn't even need to choose a color palette, it would go, pull in the whole event, generate some page for me — it was mainly around brochure sites, right? No, actually we also had real business solutions,

Betty Antebi: [26:04] like Stores and Bookings. The idea was really, in a few steps, through a Wizard, you give the Business Name, more or less information, what you want to build — a site for a consultant, a site for sales, and so on. And what was amazing is that in a few clicks, a site was created for you, and a site full of content — meaning there was a team that literally sat, and, like, researched, and brought images and relevant texts, for the purpose of, say, a yoga instructor, or a Flower Shop, or a Hat Shop and so on, and the experience was amazing — meaning, just with clicks, you were suddenly on a site.

Eyal David: [26:41] And tell me, out of curiosity, when we know that... just, I see your sticker — if we said that the KPI that led, in the example you gave earlier, was essentially Time to Publish, or Premium, right? It was Time to Premium. So in this aspect too, it was probably the leading KPI — and what did you see? Can you share? So I have to say this was before my time,

Betty Antebi: [27:06] but I know that tons and tons of traffic came from there, and tons of the premiums — meaning, it did... in ADI. In ADI, it made a very, very big step-change, so the legend goes, simply because you managed to make this product accessible — meaning, this understanding that not everyone has the Office Skills, and not everyone is, like, capable, like, even though it was Drag and Drop, and relatively, relatively simple, you know, for me, for you, but if you think about our parents, it wasn't so simple. So the simplicity of it, in my view, simply won over the public. It was, like, a few clicks, and you're there. At the time there was some Split Page, that told you to choose: do you want to start with some Template inside the Editor, do you want to start already with a site that's ready, like it already has content in it, and so on. And it really brought tons of Value, tons of Value, tons of Premium with tons of Conversions to the organization. Essentially, ADI was around the time — I think the year was, I want to say 2012, I'm not exactly sure about that, but something around that period, that ADI went live, and essentially two years ago, we made this transition, of essentially taking all this good from ADI, and bringing it inside the Classic Editor. And the reason we did this, was because we understood that essentially the audience had changed, okay? Those older people, and so on and so on, they're already building sites less, our audience changed, and essentially they can cope, in quotes, with the Classic Editor, as long as we add themes to it, and really bring in part of the worlds of ADI. You know, it also gave us very great velocity, because if essentially every business solution that's developed is developed on two editors, then now you do it on just one, and it was the right call, like, you know, we look now in hindsight, and it was the right call to take it. So in the end there's one platform, content is poured in from all kinds of places — we talked a bit about Site Generator, it's really about AI that builds the site for you, with content already tailored to what you need, or to start from a template that's empty, or to start from a template that's, you know, without content, and then inject the content into it. There really are tons of options to start from, and we say, every user does what's right for them,

Eyal David: [29:14] you know. Amazing, so you understood, like, essentially where I'm taking this — so you already answered me along the way, and also, it also ties into what you told me earlier, that essentially, when you look at the strategy Wix apparently chose, to essentially go in general in one direction, but a direction that supports many types of users — you mentioned enterprises, all the freedom, and all the this that's required, so ADI really has less place within that, unless it's integrated or injected into the experience, and relevant to that segment specifically.

Betty Antebi: [29:43] Yes, so I think I didn't say this earlier, but in ADI, the editing options were very, very limited. Yes, I took that as a variation. Yes, so they were very, very limited — meaning, you could edit, you couldn't move the elements on the stage, you could edit the text, or swap the image, or switch between different layouts, or between different color palettes. It wasn't very, very limited — that also made it very simple, it's a conscious decision, but it was more limited, and really the understanding that users change, and they need a bit more, and also, you know, the traffic moved more to the areas of the Editor, we understood that, like, it's also right for the company at the Velocity level, to unify the products and bring the good from ADI, and also simply these users had already changed, time passed, and they changed, no longer the same. Okay, so we really talked about a lot of things you did.

Eyal David: [30:32] Let's focus even on one, from one of the companies you mentioned — maybe Wix, because it really sounds like it's the lion's share of the career, and it also happened recently, is happening recently. Is there some story you want to maybe share, about something with a stock?

Betty Antebi: [30:48] Yes, so I'll talk a bit about Editor 2, which was the taking of ADI, really what I said earlier, the good stuff from ADI, into the Editor. So in my part, one of the most interesting projects was in the world of Switch Layout. So what is Switch Layout, really? You can imagine that someone starts with a really beautiful site, with some lovely template, and everything sits in place, and everything is aligned and so on, and then the user starts editing it. Changed the image here, writes slightly longer text, and slowly the site starts to break, and not look so good. And that's a problem that's relatively common, especially among users who aren't super designers, DIY users, who don't know how to move forward. They say, like, okay, this isn't nice, I don't know why, because I don't know what needs to be done now. So in this world, ADI had an amazing solution, called Switch Layout, where essentially with a click you'd switch to a different layout. You could choose from a template of layouts, that are on the side, for the section you're on. And we said, yes, we want to bring this thing into the Classic Editor. Mm-hmm. In the Classic Editor there are tons of components. ADI was built with a closed set of components, and now go generate, you know, a stunning section for every content type you have, every element, every image, every... Everything vertical, everything vector, very complex. So there we really started a very, very big project, together with data science inside Wix, from the data science team, called Switch Layout in the Classic Editor. We brought things we had from ADI, but added on top of it tons more content. I'll give an example. So essentially when you now add, for the purpose of, another paragraph, okay? Or add another title within a section, I need to be able to give you the ability to swap it for a different layout, okay? So I need to identify, okay, the content you have there, or the image type, whether it's square, whether it's landscape. You know, at first we'd do Switch Layout, and the person's head in the image would get cut off, because it didn't fit the image and what's inside it. So we worked very, very, very hard to be able to swap almost any section the user creates, to enable that same experience of, I ruined it,

Eyal David: [32:57] I can fix it easily, here's magic, and one click, and we swapped it. And behind the scenes there was some computer vision there, that essentially knew how to identify the whole area and adapt it?

Betty Antebi: [33:06] So there really were a lot of models behind it, also in worlds of, say, okay, there were a few things. There was also a world of text classification, to understand the type of text, to make sure you don't accidentally take the title and put it under the paragraph, and have it not make sense. There were really worlds of the image itself, okay, of how we deal with the image, what type of image it is, what's inside the image, an image with text, what do you do with it, say you now have a table, so you can't break the image, and you know, and it won't look the way it's supposed to look. There were worlds of, say, identifying the groups, so you have some section that has, let's say, destinations for a trip abroad, and each destination has an image, title, paragraph, and button. I need to know that the image of Paris goes with the title of Paris, and Italy goes with its own. Which is essentially a component. Exactly, that we're talking here about some listing and item list that go together, and when I rearrange them, I preserve the relationship between these entities. It was very, very complex work, super challenging, a very, very nice question — I'll say, all the metrics, all our KPIs in these worlds, it brought tons of value, meaning users use it a lot, really love this product, because really for DIY users, who aren't the experts, you sometimes can't explain why something is ugly, you say I look at this, it's not nice, I don't know why, or even sometimes they can't even say it's not nice, but they see the button, and magic one — that's interesting, so they click and see, like, what happens. Yes, and who doesn't want a little magic in life. Exactly.

Eyal David: [34:34] So you said this raised the metrics — first of all, I assume again that the main metric was essentially site completion, time to market, whatever we call it. What other metrics did it raise?

Betty Antebi: [34:51] Sometimes to tag, okay, to understand what they choose. We started to think about worlds of a beauty model, like, how do I differentiate — say, I don't show them ugly things, because that's also something you have to deal with. That here too you have tons of data. I have tons and tons of data, right, but what is beautiful, really, okay? Like, something that's beautiful for one person, maybe it's not beautiful for someone else. Is success in the fact that they opened it, chose something else, and swapped, is only that success? I want to make sure there's no spam there, that I don't bring them ugly things, or that I don't bring them too many things.

Eyal David: [35:26] You know, there's tons of interest here, tons of features hiding behind this giant thing, called Switch Layout.

Betty Antebi: [35:34] So I'll say that of course the metrics that always lead us in life are premium and collections, but definitely the whole world of, you know, the time it takes them to reach ready — by virtue of the fact that you've now shortened their work, they don't need to move every element now,

Eyal David: [35:48] rather they simply choose a new layout. Well, time to market. Time to market, time to market all the way. I think that's not bad. Wow, it sounds very, very complex, and it also includes within it a recommendations mechanism, which is what you're talking about. Right. And really, you had the view — which is really interesting — a view of a lot of data, essentially, of what each person chose, how much I can present, and that it essentially affects, the quantity of items or options I can offer, that'll really lead to a faster choice — so, like, the fact that you leaned on tons of data, that's really interesting. And essentially, how long did the end-to-end process take? It worked. How did it start? It really started, like, with a decision by the company,

Betty Antebi: [36:28] that they want to merge these two editors, and really, take what works well, into this Editor 2. It's hard for me to say exactly, because we did a lot of tests, because think about it, ADI was essentially a growth engine for the company, tons of premiums were created there, collections came from there, and we wanted to make sure we don't hurt ourselves. Meaning, an idea on the face of it sounded right and logical to us, but we wanted to make sure we don't hurt ourselves, and therefore there was a not-short process, of A/B testing, of us, on all kinds of fronts, on all kinds of products, that, like, there's this box called Editor 2, versus the two other boxes, which are ADI and Classic Editor, and making sure we don't fall, don't fall in collections, don't fall in premiums, the company keeps growing, everything's good, everything works, so it's hard for me to say about the timing, because we really tested a lot, because it's a super strategic product of the company, a core product — Wix started as site building, and therefore we did a lot of tests, so it's hard for me to tell you exactly the point in time. I will say we could rely on a lot of things, which is actually nice, because we did reuse of something that was created in ADI even before my time, that worked well, we took it, expanded it, and added more capabilities on top, so we started from something existing, and, like, grew it into what needs to be, to support the Classic Editor users, so it'd be a tool that's value-bold. Something that also succeeded, right? Yes, lucky, very lucky that it succeeded, yes. So I'm glad,

Eyal David: [38:09] well, so essentially when was roughly the moment you ripped off this band-aid, and stayed with Editor 2? In August two years ago. Whoa. Yes, in August two years ago. Right, you remembered that, sorry. Amazing. Okay, really interesting story, I just wanted to understand — today you essentially work with teams in Israel, abroad, what does it look like? Today I work with development teams in Israel,

Betty Antebi: [38:31] we have three development teams in App Market, and I also have a product team I manage of course, which is my team, so both product people and UX people — I should say product women and UX women, because I have a strong female force, for the first time, and it's really fun. So really we, like, the experience is that I'm usually always with development teams in Israel, both at the startup, and at Retalix, and at Wix too, the Editor team is a big team that sits in Israel, in all the editors, there's also a branch, but somehow it worked out that I really worked a lot with teams in Israel. In my previous role, for the first time I worked with remote teams, in a complex situation — meaning, during a war, right, so really in Ukraine, unfortunately there's still a war, and the R&D team initially all sat there, and we also had a product person who sat there, and when this whole thing in Ukraine started, they started, you know, moving clearly, and some moved to Krakow, some stayed in Kyiv, some went and wandered around Europe,

Eyal David: [39:34] and it's a complex situation. As we know from our situation — I don't know, your brain gets foggy, at least for me it's two weeks,

Betty Antebi: [39:40] there are people who took it harder. No, unequivocally, and I'll say though that still, and really kudos to them, that they still managed to deliver during this period, but I say, not only is working with a remote team different from working with an Israeli team — because there are no hallway chats, and no just-a-quick-question, and no going into the developers' room to ask — so not only is it challenging, but they're also scattered among themselves and from me. So if in the past, say, you have some product person, some little branch of yours that sits with R&D, then suddenly they're not there either, because they're in a different place. So everything becomes much more complex in managing remote teams, and then you need to find ways to do this Informal Communication — meaning, to create the connection with them, also, like, to build the team, and also to see how you create the coffee chats, without really having the ability to just go for a moment to the kitchenette and have a conversation in the kitchen. So that's something I really encountered for the first time in Analytics, and I learned tons of things. Meaning, I can share a bit, that first of all, we have a tendency sometimes, when we get on Zoom calls, to go straight to the point. Very Israeli, very to-the-point, and it's going straight to the point, so no. Always, especially if it's one-on-one calls, if it's me, and it was an individual thing of mine, then to talk for a moment — after the storm, take some two or three minutes, so, you know, to get to know the person a bit, talk a bit. I'm not talking about the one-on-one calls you do in the intro, but I'm talking about the fact that when you're already in the role, still, like, to try to create this hallway chat, that doesn't exist, the small-talk like that. Second thing, to be very attentive. We don't notice it, but a lot of times in Zoom calls, what happens is, you know, people who are in the room talk among themselves, or cut into what whoever's speaking is saying, and it's really important for you, as the one managing the call, to manage the discussion. In every regular call, but all the more so. But all the more so it's harder, because you say, like, did you say something? You know, you kind of pause the room for a moment, and you say, did you say something? So super, like, I got very, very positive feedback on this, where they said thank you, because I felt I was part of the conversation. Especially, say, even in my small team, which is the product team, where I have one product manager who's, you know, in Valencia, she's not in Israel. So she's the only one who gets on Zoom, like, she always laughed, like there's some big head that's, like, in the room, and, like, her and everyone else. So really to bring her in, to bring her into the conversation all the time. I'll say we used Slack a ton, also as a way to do communication — I talked about that a lot earlier, so, like, also communication around a certain project, so every project essentially has its Slack channel, with the people, with the BE, with the FE, with product, with UX, everyone together, and you keep the channel open there. The ability — and of course this needs to be in cooperation with the other side, but to create this coffee chat, and to write to someone, can you hop on a call? Or exactly, or to come and say, hey, ask a question, and to know — and also for the other side to know — that you don't expect an immediate answer, you just put the question there, and when they get to it, and maybe in a meeting, they'll be able to answer you. Meaning, the communication channels, these informal ones, are super important for creating the connection, and another thing that worked very, very well in this group, in my view, is the celebrate together — so we work with some method called milestones, the big one is quarterly work, ten-twelve weeks of sprint, and then at the end we meet, we do some celebration that celebrates all the successes of the projects together, and always as part of it, there's some online game, that the fun-maker in our group finds, fun-maker, yes, yes, and it's amazing, because you essentially manage to create this team-building through the game, or, say, awards — we just, we finished some milestone of quality, and we did a kind of awards, who fixed the most bugs, who did the most commits. Now, this thing is very, it's very, you know, it unites, it brings you together, and it creates, like, this connection, without which it's very hard for you as a product manager, to advance your products, and you need to work on it, and in remote it's a bit harder, I feel, and for me at least.

Eyal David: [43:44] So essentially what you did here, again — you were managing the, there's the product in the thing, but you essentially went and took ownership of the whole work process in this case, that you understood you have to advance, you essentially put your communication abilities at the center, and harnessed everyone essentially to keep working, despite the situation, you were very creative, and it stems from all the tips you just raised, and it's also open to solutions, as you essentially said — the fun-maker, is that something you thought of?

Betty Antebi: [44:17] No, the fun-maker is something that exists within Wix, that simply exists within Wix, okay. Yes, something that exists within Wix, but the importance, this enjoyment of, you know, doing the celebration, where I create a kind of competitiveness game, between the groups, it's amazing, and another thing that happens at our place that's very, very nice, is that always when someone comes back from vacation, they do a demo — so there's a demo presenting the new projects, and there's the vacation demo, where you see where they were in Greece, where they were in Spain, and there's something that really connects the people, meaning this connection. Yes, FOMO, exactly. This connection is very, very important, and you need to create it, you need to work on it a bit more, when the team is remote, and not a local team. And not to be afraid of it, of the abroad part, or of... you know, as long as the other side also understands

Eyal David: [44:59] that you don't expect it to happen immediately — otherwise, it can be a bit overwhelming. Amazing. Well, so we'll really wrap up the episode now — do you have any recommendations for a product manager?

Betty Antebi: [45:09] Or in general anyone who wants a bit of product? Yes. So I'll say a few things. I think there's a lot of — I talked about communication — a lot of it is to listen, okay? It's to listen to our users too, yes, I said earlier, Wix is a user-obsessed company, we're constantly doing user interviews, being connected to the field. You should listen to your development manager, who says something can't happen because of A, B, and D; you should listen to other groups, try to understand, be empathetic, that, you know, they can't do it now, they'll maybe do it later. So I think there's a lot to listen to. I think that... And lately it's less in the headlines, and they really say a product manager doesn't have to be technical. I tend to agree, although there are advantages to being technical, and I think you do need to be able to understand how things work on the inside. Because otherwise it's also hard for you, you know, to put up a fight — not a fight, but it's hard for you, like, to discuss things with your development manager, and you really can't understand how complicated some things are. So it feels to me that you need to understand how things work on the inside, even if you're not super super technical. And one last thing — I already said this in the conversation — it's to constantly ask yourself why you're doing what you're doing, and for whom you're doing it. Because if you can't answer these two questions, then it's not certain that it's... then you want to do. Exactly, it's not certain it's valid. It's part of our resource. Listen, be curious, and also have a reason for what you do,

Eyal David: [46:32] a distilled and very clear reason. Bati, it was amazing, thank you so much. Thank you, thank you kindly. If people want to get in touch with you, is it on LinkedIn? Yes. So we'll definitely add a link. It was amazing, thank you so much. Thank you, bye, take care.