Homepage for 2.5 Million People

From 2008 to 2012 I worked for one of the leading eCommerce companies of Central and Eastern Europe. Hundreds of difficult projects with heavy external and internal constraints shaped me as a designer and a product leader.

In 2011 Nokaut.pl was attracting over 2.5 million users every month — growing to 5 million by early 2012 — and was the main engine of growth leading to the Grupa Nokaut IPO. In a country with just over 20 million internet users, those numbers were remarkable.

Despite the business results, Nokaut.pl never established a solid brand. The majority of users entered through product pages well-positioned in Google Search. With the IPO approaching, the CEO asked my team to turn the homepage from an SEO powerhouse into a destination page with value of its own — without harming any of that SEO power.

Turn the homepage into a destination users would want to visit. Keep every SEO feature intact but make it a valuable part of the experience. Educate users about the value of Nokaut.pl. And find new premium ad locations for the partner network.

Leading the research and analysis. Building the business case and product plan. Leading the redesign team of one designer and two developers. Wireframing and prototyping the key experiences. Negotiating ad slots. Presenting plan and progress to the CEO. And measuring performance with multivariate split tests and usability studies.

The CEO asked me to be hands-on and design the key experiences myself. I am not fond of micromanagement, but with the IPO approaching, changes on the homepage were going to be scrutinized by media and analysts.

The homepage started to attract more users, and the new ad slots increased ad revenue.

During the research phase we discovered a need to compare multiple products without losing the context of the current search query. The feature built from that study significantly increased the conversion rate — more than the redesign itself did.

The CEO was happy with the new homepage and the positive media reception, and I was designated to comment on the redesign to media outlets.