2011

Homepage for 2.5M People

In 2011 I led the process of the redesign of Nokaut.pl Homepage. At that time, Nokaut.pl was attracting 2.5 million users a month and the owner of Nokaut.pl – Grupa Nokaut was preparing their IPO. An intense project!

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Context

2008 – 2012 I had a pleasure to work for one of the leading eCommerce companies of Central & Eastern Europe – Grupa Nokaut. Hundreds of difficult projects with lots of external and internal constraints shaped me as a designer and a product leader.

After two years of working as an individual contributor, I was promoted to the management team, simultaneously leading the design organization and working in the product R&D team on the future of Grupa Nokaut products.

Among all the great projects that I had a pleasure to participate in, couple holds a very special place in my memory. They were extremely difficult, challenging, yet important and... not entirely successful. They were great lessons for myself and the business.

The one that was both memorable and highly interesting was the redesign of Nokaut.pl homepage in 2011.

In 2011 Nokaut.pl was attracting over 2.5 million users every month (grew up to 5 million in early 2012!) and was the main engine of the growth that led to Grupa Nokaut IPO in 2012. Taking that at that time Poland had just over 20 million Internet users–the numbers generated by Nokaut.pl were amazing.

Despite the strong business results, Nokaut.pl never managed to establish a solid brand. Majority of users entered Nokaut.pl through product pages well–positioned in Google Search.

With the approaching IPO Grupa Nokaut wanted to change this flaw in the business model. The CEO decided to ask my team to redesign the homepage and turn it from an SEO powerhouse to a destination page with value on its own, but... without affecting negatively any of the SEO powers.

Nokaut.pl homepage after the redesign in 2011
Nokaut.pl Homepage after the 2011 redesign.

The Process

The chart below represents the process run for this project. It's also an accurate representation of how my team and myself run design and product work at Grupa Nokaut at that time. We took pride in being data–driven yet creative.

The homepage redesign was a special project with very high stakes and CEO requested me to be hands–on. I had to design the key experiences myself. I'm not fond of micromanagement, but I understood that with the upcoming IPO, changes on the homepage are going to be highly scrutinized by media and analysts.

Header of Nokaut.pl homepage
Negotiating ad placements and presenting the value of Nokaut.pl were important for key stakeholders. On the design above you can see multiple signals of Nokaut.pl strength (counter of users who saved money with Nokaut.pl, prominent mention that Nokaut.pl stores 10 million offers from nearly 4000 stores) and a new premium ad space.
Chart showing the process used in the project

Results

  • The homepage started to attract more users.
  • During the research phase, we've discovered a need to compare multiple different products without losing the context of the current search query. A feature built as a result of this study significantly increased conversion rate.
  • New ad slots increased ad revenue.
  • The CEO was happy with the new homepage and the positive media reception. I was designated to comment on the redesign to media outlets.
Design leadership requires empathy towards users as well as towards the stakeholders. Successful negotiations with key executives can lead to outstanding results.

Lessons Learned

  1. The redesign brought a smaller revenue change than a feature inspired by the research that my team did at the same time. There was a solid business case for changing the homepage, but it only worked within the given priorities (IPO). An investment in more user research and product changes could lead to significantly better business results.
  2. Trust of the key stakeholders means everything. I was lucky to be granted a high degree of trust. Thanks to that the design team had more freedom to do the best work of their lives.

Tools

  • Omnigraffle (wireframing)
  • Axure (prototyping)
  • Notable (comments on visual design)
  • Photoshop (visual design)
  • Proprietary multiveriable split testing tool
  • Google Analytics

More Projects?

Ready for more of stories? Choose the next project below.
2009

Conversion Optimization

In 2009 I was trusted with the optimization of critical elements of the Nokaut.pl product page. Together with the engineering team, we've worked out a series of hypotheses based on factors affecting human attention (contrast, color, movement, pattern...) and we've performed a series of multivariable split tests. The result? 24% increase in the conversion rate.

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2010

Paper Prototyping Redesigned

The story of the notepad that changed my life

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2011

Mobile App for 3 Platforms

Web products of Grupa Nokaut had been dominant (2.5 million unique visitors per month in 2011), but the company didn't have much success on the mobile market. Our mobile offering, at the time, was limited to a dated mobile version of the core service built for old cell phones. This service was highly popular couple of years earlier, but with the growing popularity of smart phones users expected "richer" experiences.

In 2010 Grupa Nokaut asked me to lead the process of designing and building a mobile app for 3 platforms: iOS, Android and Windows Mobile.

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2011

eCommerce Video Portal

For over two years I worked in the R&D Group at Grupa Nokaut. We were tasked with coming up with new product ideas that address the most critical strategic problems of the business. One of the projects that we realized in 2011 was Nokaut.tv – the eCommerce Video Portal that quickly attracted over 100,000 viewers. I had a pleasure to lead the design and product development process.

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2015

The New Design Editor

In 2015 UXPin was an established design tool serving over two thousand companies. We've just raised our Series A (led by True Ventures and Jeff Veen – former VP of Design at Adobe).

We knew that this is not enough. We knew that we have to do even more to realize our mission and help the design tools industry move forward. Soon, we've started a design process that changed the entire industry.

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2018

The Open Source Adventure

Since 2012 I'm operating as a full–time CEO of a growing startup – UXPin (over 50 employees, profitable). Despite that, I've never stopped being a designer, coder, and a product person. To relax and contribute to UXPin and the overall design and engineering community, I tend to take on side projects.

In 2017, after talking to a bunch of friends working on design systems, I decided to devote my weekends to the creation of an open source repository of analyzed design systems.

For two subsequent weekends in January 2018, I designed and coded (React.js and Node.js) the repository. The popularity of this project exceeded my most optimistic expectations.

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2019

Designing for yourself is tough

I've spent way over a decade designing all sorts of products, but hardly ever – brand identities. Nevertheless, I have a deep affection for the very special connection between art and storytelling always present in great brand design.

When I decided to build my personal website, I knew that this is a great opportunity to define my brand – my story, aesthetics and message with a holistic design process.

I quickly became my own most demanding client and yet... I thoroughly enjoyed the process of designing Treder Design brand.

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