ZeroDegrees.com was one of the first business social networking sites before LinkedIn dominated the industry. Extensive research was conducted on the company to understand its business strategy and brand focus and to deliver an image that sets it apart from its competitors. I successfully redesigned and launched the site, and soon after, a large entity purchased all the business social networking sites and its IP.
RESULTS Investors received 20X return upon sale with the help of website redesign. Inclusivity was way ahead of its time. Throughout the site, I used a variety of visual and eye-candy graphics to reinforce the idea of making a connection through multiple devices.
The vision ZeroDegrees was one of the first sites to prove and validate the number of degrees from Kevin Bacon. The company was located in the heart of Hollywood, across the street from Tower Records. It went viral, with thousands of customers wanting to know the number of separations they have from other celebrities. Google It: “Six degrees from Kevin Bacon” is still a trendy topic.
ZeroDegrees is an online business networking service that allows members to add the names of business and personal contacts to a searchable database. It was one of the first business social networking sites. Its IP and its user base made it very attractive to VC.
Before/After – The original Zerodegrees.com website looked amateur. I was the sole designer responsible for redesigning the website to make it more modern. I hired a copywriter and launched the new site that directly increased the user base. The VP of marketing and CEO gave me a bonus upon the sale of the dot-com. A 20x VC return.
Dreamworks (SKG) – Pop.com (UGC Videos site)
The Begging – Pop.com was a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and other top A-list Hollywood filmmakers. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen backed the company to produce as an original online content social entertainment company. DreamWorks, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg are joining Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, who created Pop.com, envisioning and embracing the future of online (internet) entertainment. Pop.com is an OUGC social entertainment company.
THE MAKING OF SUPERFANS DREAMWORKS (SKG) – My original assignment was to help create a web presence for Pop.com, showcasing original digital shorts from A-list celebrities. Due to rising costs, the original content creation was put on hold. The business pivoted, and I was pulled into another acquisition—a community fan website called countingdown.com hosting Pop.com’s original content from A-list celebrities. I was responsible for the re-brand and a complete UX/UI redesign. Countingdown’s online success was based on a ticker timer that counts down when a movie is expected to release into movie theaters. The goal was to build movie hype through its user base. I still have the original flash files.
DREAMWORKS (SKG) – EVOLUTION MOVIE SITE Also, during that time at DreamWorks, the vision was to create movie sites affiliated with the pop.com and countingdown.com to give super-fans behind-the-scenes movie access. I art directed the movie “Evolution” website directed by Ivan Reitman. Instead of launching the typical beautifully finished movie website, this unique site as it was designed to be a rolling where content changes daily. Behind-the-scenes content with hooks into the fan community drove its success. I was literally changing content on the fly based from community feedback.
Responsible for contributing to the FY21 platform strategy.
Mgr. Quote: Becky S “Geoff was the sole designer on a product that helped us manage our Vendor relationships. He was asked to deliver several features but also took ownership of user research and suggested additional user delight features. He was responsible for every aspect of the design and prototyping for testing and presented his work to leaders in design and products.”
Dashboards – Imagine AI/ML predictive analysis dashboards analyzing vendor relations for new customer potentials and opportunities to increase business efficiency. Experience improvements that keep the mothership fly-wheel offering increased transparency for customer (internal/external) relationships.
Customer interviews Responsible for conducting 1:1 interviews with vendor managers to validate the experience hypothesis. Customer feedback directly affected the product roadmap, and some features in the PRFAQ were challenged by customer feedback.
Customer Quotes from UX findings: Nine feature areas received positive feedback from customer interviews. • “Frequently amount of codes are created by a different team, and I had no idea.” • “Proactive suggestions would be great.” • “The chart would save me time than going to Excel.”
Customer Journeys – e2e Workflow Prototypes The trend line represents suggested business decisions and missed opportunities. The speed and pace are unlike any other product machine. I was shipping new feature improvements on a consistent cadence.
Customer Relations At scale, the knobs that control the underlying business algorithms that directly affect vendor-customer relations through multiple channels. Using AI/ML alerts to Vendors increases efficiency potential and new opportunities to increase sales.
Vision OP1: Retail Media (CO-OP Incentives) Design Presentation and contributed to OP1’s future innovation features. I was improving FCF from additional funding captured by lowering the number of tickets to decrease funding leakages. I presented a deck to leadership and a UX/UI spec outlining the proposed features.
Systems UI Kit (NEW) – Amazon was on a mission to transform internal platforms to reduce costs and increase efficiency digitally. I was on point to level up the platform and pressure-test the system library patterns/components designed to scale for the enterprise platforms.
Discovery – Beta Site UX Challenge: Hypothesis building from customer touch points, data, and interviews. The experience goal is to simplify the overly complex to decrease missed opportunities and increase future monetization opportunities.
The Beginning: The Plan (PRFAQ) Product Planning (The Amazon Way) – My journey starts with an Amazon PRFAQ, a descriptive doc describing the “What and Why” the business needs to invest in new feature improvements.
Digital Feedback – (Web Apps, Kiosks, QR codes, APIs) Apptentive’s mobile web (WebSDK) lacked critical features compared to the mobile SDKs (Apple/Android), which made mobile feedback successful. I took the role of product producer to have feature product parity and extend the product offerings to more form factors beyond Mobile.
Mobile WEB SDK – Demo Examples A dev can install the Web SDK in under 5 mins. I worked with a dev 1:1 and modified the JavaScript source code to trigger the love dialog feedback from a QR code. The new monetary opportunity to use dynamic QR codes based on Fan Signals data could be a game changer.
Customer Love Summit The Customer Love Summit is a yearly conference showcasing Apptentive’s new products. I improved the event by showcasing further product feedback interaction features in real-time, all powered by attendee participation. The vision was that by the end of the event, the CEO on stage could switch to a monitor showing how many customers participated in a live demo dashboard featuring the new API in action.
Demo Table I was responsible for the customer summit demo table, spearheading a variety of feedback devices, including my hackathon hardware project using a Raspberry Pie OS., iPad (Kiosks) Table Tents (QRcode), and an Amazon LTE Device.
The Results – Customer interactions, participation, and enthusiasm were high. Everyone involved loved the feedback mechanism, from customers to the CEO. Prospect customers (attendees) were sending feedback in real time. Participants and Investors gave the Demo Table high marks from the real-time data displayed from a Gecko Board Dashboard showcasing the public API.
Customer Love Summit I coded up the QRcode “Did you love lunch? Each lunch table at the event had a table tent QRcode. Using the platform’s Web SDK, I could customize the different feedback types once a participant triggers the love dialog from the QR code.
How does a hypothesis become a product? I participated in a company Hackathon. Using the new WEB SDK, I proposed an IoT device using hardware buttons (GPIO ports) connected to a Raspberry Pie OS. I conceptualized, designed, and built a responsive web app to complete the project. I called it a progressive survey using skip logic. A customer can iterate through various modal windows that capture the binary Yes/True, No/False feedback questions from the video game hardware buttons.
Customer Feedback After successfully shipping the WebSDK e2e experience, I transitioned to customer interviews to get honest customer opinions to validate the business value.
The Results — 6 months after launching the WebSDK, sales were able to close new revenue deals since the business could support Mobile, Web Apps, and other form factors completing the product suite across all form factors.
NEW PRODUCT CHANNEL – (Mobile Web, Kiosks, API) The business vision was to capture customer feedback from any form factor at scale. I was on point to design the first Web App SDK to influence the SaaS platform’s capabilities using the new APIs. As a product producer, I worked with the Devs 1:1 in the trenches to create product parity with the mobile SDKs. Then, I modernized the feedback interactions, updated the UI kit, and allowed customers to customize their interactions using CSS.
The UX Challenge: The original “Contact Us” feedback button looked amateur; it had a picture of the office and one contact form field and did not dog food their product. I proposed to the team to invest in the WebSDK to have feature parity with the MobileSDK.
The Beginning… When I joined the company, the original customer feedback system was hard-coded into Apptentive’s platform; no WebApp SDK was available. Until then, the business was focused on Mobile SDKs for Apple/Android.
Results – Sold for 16x Designing a new platform from scratch in 1.5 years is hard work. Still, by implementing design-level thinking methodologies and modern design principles, I was able to deliver a platform that is modern, intuitive, and could be a game-changer for the IT industry.
Seattle Business Magazine I was on stage when BitTian won #1 for the best company to work for. The team culture and product focus were some of the most high-performance software teams I worked on.
Public Launch (GTM): 4/2017 As the lead design manager, I was responsible for the entire experience. I owned key platform features, and once the UI Models (MVP) were in place, I interviewed and hired 3 UX Designers to hand off new features to quickly scale the platform. Then I focused on updating the Dashboard, Delivery center, Entity management, Activity feed, Subscription billing, and 3rd party OEM task workflows.
Dominic Pouzin – CTO Quote: “Geoffrey is a very talented senior UX designer and would be a huge asset to any company, especially those with a focus on enterprise products. At BitTitan, Geoffrey helped our product UI evolve from “amateurish” to professional / on-par with top SaaS solutions. Geoffrey’s key strength is creation of new UX concepts and high-level look-and-feel experience for enterprise products.
Beta Launch: 10/2016 Among the improvements adopting the new UI-Kit were the Dashboard, Service Center, Activity feed, Subscription billing, Delivery Center, and Cost Reporting, and around 20 new IT service solutions were implemented.
Systems Library – Integration Once a new UI kit was implemented the platform began to come to life. The new kit helped speed up design/development time since UI systems patterns and common controls were consistent across the platform. We made additional layout changes to simplify the experience by introducing detailed fly-out panels and inline accordions.
Systems Library – Redesign One challenge was designed in an old UI kit. I knew I had to modernize the platform to help BitTitan served as a trusting SaaS application. I made it a company commitment to drive a modern UI Kit–the existing grey navigation and the overall site felt like a typical Seattle day to me. I always knew the future of the site would need to be something much more modern.
Preview Launch: 7/2016 Once the platform MVP framework was in place, it was time to start integrating new feature services and onboarding new customers to the platform. The first step is to go external and start dog fooding the product to get real customer feedback. This was an exciting time for the company to be on a fast-paced high-performance phased agile development team. The culture/collaboration fostered solutions for the greater company interests. BitTitans’ motto was: “Get Shit Done!”
New Feature Development: 7/2016 Once the platform MVP framework was in place, it was time to start integrating new business service workflows into the platform. One challenge was designed in an old UI kit. I knew I had to modernize the platform to help BitTitan serve as a trusting SaaS application. I started visually exploring new designs and hired a few rock-star UX designers, while we also turned our attention to designing new features such as Dashboard, Service center, Device management, OEM services, and Activity center. The product machine was in high-performance mode using remote development shipping features in 2-3-week sprints.
Alpha Platform (Customer Onboarding): 1/2016 After multiple requirement meetings, presentations, and wireframes, we shipped the Alpha platform UI, building the minimal feature requirements to meet an MVE. At the same time, I supported a host of new services being developed on the old platform. The system had to scale for new services while App-Switching (drop-menu) into MigrationWiz, Sales Automation, Deployment Pro, Data Encryption, SSO/Registration, User Management, App Launcher, Purchasing, and innovating new Cloud Services.
The Big Picture (Discovery): 10/2015 A lot of research went into understanding the new business direction. BitTitan’s flagship product MigrationWiz (MW) had six-plus years of technology behind it, including multiple types of Migration services, Shopping Cart, Licensing, Support, SSO/rBac, and Account Management. It would be too risky for the company to build on the current MW platform to avoid service disruptions.
The Process: The decision was made to create a new platform from scratch, use the latest framework (ember.js), but still be on a cloud platform (Azure). The wireframe below shows the initial breakdown of how the two platforms could co-exist as features need to be migrated or re-architected to the new platform. We needed hooks to other systems using Federated SSO while being Hippo compliant. This was a data migration platform that migrates Fortune 500 companies. Customers wanted to reduce costs by switching cloud providers seamlessly.
The Business Pivot The CEO made a business decision to leverage MigrationWiz (cash cow + partner base) and pivot the company to Managed Service Provider (MSP). This was perfect for enterprise customers needing a way to migrate legacy data to the cloud to be on a modern tech stack (AWS, Google, Azure, etc.)
The Collaboration – CEO The CEO had a clear vision of the business and understood the landscape of On-Premise computers will be phased out, and the future would be cloud computing and AI. I didn’t have the technical background, and he knew that. So he took the time, and we were locked in a room for two weeks with the designers, and we mapped out the entire vision for the platform. We presented the vision to the dev team with InVision prototypes and gave the dev team a review. Then, they started to disagree and commit.
The Collaboration UX design was embedded in the development team. I asked the CEO if we could buy a large-format printer to print out the experiences based on the dev sprint the team was on. We were shipping features every month. I took this picture when the developers collaborated on the floor on how best to solve the development challenge. It was incredible that we were shipping features every month.
MigrationWiz: UX/UI Refactor My solution is redesigning the task management workflow to be a vertical list on the left navigation rail to track completed steps. This has been highly successful, reducing the number of support tickets and increasing customer confidence in achieving a migration. The introduction of the left navigation for task management provided the baseline for future workflows for MSP Complete.
The Platform – Discovery The original MigrationWiz functionality was a wizard-type UI model. The amount of customer confusion and support tickets was a real pain point for customer support. The platform served well (initially) as an email migration service. However, the UI model was never expected to scale beyond that as the business grew. The UX started to break down when new features were bolted on. I was the Team of One (UX designer), employee #36, responsible for re-architecting and modernizing the migration workflow experiences.
The Beginning When I joined the company, the original MigrationWiz platform looked amateur and was built on a dated tech stack, which slowed innovation. The business decided to redesign the tech stack using a more modern framework.
Windows Store App Publishing Platform. Microsoft was feeling pressure from Apple regarding their App Store. Microsoft made the business pivot to modernize its own Windows OS and build an App Store to compete with Apple. I was hired to be on the Windows 8 design team and relocated to WA.
Lead UX designer for the first public release of the Windows 8 App Store publishing platform. Responsible for adopting the Metro Design language and many core feature e2e experiences.
The Experience Design Research (XDR) team’s core responsibility was modernizing Microsoft Windows OS. Each designer had a researcher counterpart to conduct deep customer research and to validate a scenario. Designers would prototype an experience, and research would bring customers into mirrored, fully furnished rooms with eye-tracking software. Within 5-10 customer interviews, I would receive a full breakdown analysis report. Viewing and listing customers talk about the experience gained valuable insights. One of Windows’ principles was “Change is bad unless it’s great.” We used this principle to move forward with development
APP ONBOARDING PAGES Responsible for shipping the app submission onboarding workflow pages to publish a Windows Store App for free or a paid download.
Customer Feedback Feature — From the App Store, a customer could have two-way conversations with the App Developer by allowing the customer to send a private message. The goal was to help developers improve the quality of the App. I prototyped the idea and pitched this leadership as an innovation to improve product experience.
The Insights – From my own experience publishing Oscar’s Adventure as an early adopter, I received a few negative comments. I would have liked to be able to respond to customer feedback.
· Reduce the amount of negative app feedback shown in the app store. · Reduce the perception of poor Windows App Store becoming a bug triage location.
The concept – In the Windows App store, a customer can communicate directly with the developer and get real-time customer feedback under Ratings and Reviews. From working with researches this made me think of could this be done through software.
Problem Statement – The Windows App shell/SDK (tech stack) was still in early development, causing Apps to crash, which wasn’t necessarily the developer’s fault. App crashes were hard to test in the production world since Windows was in private beta mode, thus driving customers to write public feedback through ratings and reviews.
Business Partnership Due to the number of images and time I could spend on the application, I orchestrated an advertising partnership with dreamstime.com. In exchange, I had full access to their entire illustration library. I also gave them splash screen advertising throughout each game transition. This was a significant business deal and a win-win for both parties.
Taking Initiative While working on the App developer publishing platform, I was curious about publishing my Windows app and better understanding the customer pain points. I contacted a developer, and we agreed to build Oscar’s Adventure, a children’s learning app for ages 3-6. We successfully designed, built, and published the app in less than a month. The process helped me understand the customer journey, enabling me to influence product decisions since I was a customer.
Oscar Sketches – Some early concept sketches of Oscar the Otter to the final .svg variations.
WINDOWS OS – DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
WINDOWS – Metro Design Language When I was on the Windows Design Team (XDR), the team was on a mission to re-image every customer touchpoint digitally for the Windows OS and Web Apps. Part of the team’s responsibility was to introduce the Windows 8 Design Principles and Metro Design Language as the foundational building blocks to modernize the system patterns, and I was able to leverage the UI Kit library elements for the Windows Developer Platform.
The Vision Through consolidation, Microsoft can build an App Store marketplace by supporting various technology platforms. A newly re-imaged App dev center could onboard Windows XAML apps, Xbox, Win32, Web Apps, and Android through a unified ingestion pipeline.
The Insights Apple leads the industry with great design, and the Windows organization was pressured to attract the cool kids back to stay relevant. The chatter is that if Apple allowed its OS system to be installed on any PC hardware (hypothetically), how detrimental could this be to Microsoft’s Windows OS cash machine?
The Beginning – Design Challenge When I joined the Windows App Store team, a product manager from the India Development Center (IDC) presented me with a PowerPoint concept deck showing the dashboard. I spent the next few years art directing and influencing product decisions while working with the remote team.
App Analytics – Dev Portal After completing the development platform, I was moved to the App Analytics team. The Developer Platform needs a way to measure App Analytics, and I was responsible for designing the first App Analytics application journeys. The team wanted the App data to be transparent so marketers could see their application’s success.
App Analytics – Pivot Pages I shipped all the supporting analytics pages in less than a year. The platform has various key App analytics pages, including Downloads, Usage, Purchases, Conversions, In-app Purchases, Financials, App Quality, and In-App Advertising. The data needed to show analysis/insights on a much more granular level, including source path tracking, store listing pages, Store spotlight pages, and Social references, while aggregating the data from top locales.
Metro UI Kit – Loading Spinner My contribution to the Windows 8 Metro UI kit was the loading spinner. The original 8-24-bit (.gif) loading spinner was dated technology. I partnered with a dev 1:1 to update the dated loading spinner with the new Windows 8 (OS) operating system loading spinner. Millions of people have seen the Windows 8 loading spinner for the web at one time.
MICROSOFTS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
WINDOWS – METRO DESIGN LANGUAGE When I was on the Windows Experience Design Research Team (XDR), part of the team’s mission was to digitally reimagine every customer touchpoint for the Windows OS and Web Apps to modernize those experiences. The entire Windows Design Organization was responsible for introducing the Windows 8 Design Principles and Metro Design Language as the foundational building blocks for modernizing the Windows ecosystem.
App Analytics – The Beginning After designing and shipping the app developer platform, I created the initial style guide for all histogram charts, including Line, Area, Bar, and Pie charts, to be used across the platform.
Design Challenge When I joined the Windows Store Dev Portal, an India Development Center (IDC) product manager presented me with a PowerPoint concept deck showing the dashboard and described the vision. I spent the next few years art directing and influencing product decisions while working with the offshore team. The other change was having to refactor the systems library UI kit. At that time, Microsoft didn’t have any prebuilt react component libraries. We had to build the systems library besides building the technology. Luckily has already worked on the framework Windows Metro Design Language.
WINDOWS (XDR) RESEARCH CASE STUDY
Windows Apps API Documentation To personally tailor our documentation to the developers’ needs and requirements, thus improving app quality. Let developers set their preferences so the developer documentation can deliver an experience that meets their individual needs, regardless of whether they are first-time visitors or have been developing on Windows for 10+ years.
Re-architecting the navigation would increase productivity and reduce developer frustrations. Developers will have more time to focus on important tasks such as writing code, instead of spending extra time scouring search engines, hubs, blogs, and MSDN looking for software APIs.
Navigation starts with the Superset/Subset filter controls. A drop-down menu is used for the Platform, and the other is for the Presentation model. The initial version will include the Windows 8 App platform using the following presentation models JavaScript, HTML5, XAML, and DirectX.
Conceptual Overview My proposal is a complete redesign of the navigation and functionality based on filter controls (drop menu) + Subset controls + Hide/show disclosure triangles. The outcome is a complete overhaul to a dated tree model structure and the use of modern web controls. In a world of object-oriented programming, the tree navigation model (Parent/Child nesting) is unintuitive for development, especially when the associated (siblings) APIs drop out of context.
In the proposed new navigation tool, the APIs seamlessly bucket together and vertically grouped. A dev can expand and scroll through every level of the TOC without navigating up or back down – all while using fewer clicks and keeping corollary APIs visible and clickable. I built POC prototypes to present concepts to internal developers to validate the model UI model.
Concepts & Prototypes Supersets/Subsets: When a filter is selected, the navigation control loads associated namespaces (the primary subset). Then when a namespace is selected, the APIs within that (the secondary subset) are displayed, so that the secondary subset is based on the Primary selection:
Comparison with existing tree UI navigation model: The following diagram shows the current model and the new model side by side. In the current “tree” model, you have to expand parent nodes if you want to see neighboring (aka “corollary”) APIs. The expander must be clicked every time you load a new page. Many developers are unaware that the expander exists; without it, you must navigate up a level (reloading the page) every time you want to see APIs alongside the one you landed on.
Top Customer Pain Points The current reference section TOC frustrates developers and hinders the development process. As hundreds of APIs continue to come on board, the TOC will grow and the current tree UI model will continue to be cumbersome for developers trying to find specific APIs.
P1 – I need the Dev Center to retain basics about my dev environment P1 – Show me related classes, properties, and members without losing context P1 – Context is lost if levels are hidden and neighbors as reference P1 – I want to sort/filter APIs by language P2 – Currently fixed page width is restrictive due to lengthy documentation
Developer ResearchFeedback 1. I wish the Dev Center could retain basics about my dev environment, and when I search for content, the site should reflect the primary language I use.
2. Need the ability to filter on platform development – I want to see related classes, properties, and members without losing context. The TOC control takes a lot of time to load and find related APIs.
3. Search results are not what’s expected – Searching for an application programming interface (API) often doesn’t land within the top search results. There is a lack of trust due to cross-site navigation doesn’t behave as expected.
On-Premise Field Research I was lucky enough to have a dedicated researcher assigned to understand the developer’s pain points. First, I outlined two likely scenarios in the ongoing search for the proper API.
Developer 1 needs to identify and learn the right JavaScript API to accomplish a specific development task. He starts by investigating which API is right for his needs.
He’ll first search using keywords in Google until he finds an API that strongly resembles what he needs. He’ll then forage by browsing reference pages (and all related “See Also” pages) for sibling APIs to build a mental map of the API surface. Ultimately, Dev 1 wants to be confident that he’s using the optimal, best-matched API for the task. For example, in implementing a fly-out menu, Dev 1 reviewed related APIs to check whether the best solution may be a subclass of the API he was looking at.
Then, he’ll learn the API and follow the link from the API page to the applicable code samples, download them, and play with the samples to learn the API space – and confirm he’s indeed found the right API. About 80% of the time, he’ll find what needs to identify the right API and know how to use it through this strategy.
Developer 2 starts by finding the right class/API. When he isn’t sure what JavaScript API or class to use, he’ll start by typing stuff into Visual Studio to see whether IntelliSense helps him find it. But often, it just gives a list of every object available – this doesn’t help him.
If he can’t find the proper API or class using IntelliSense, he’ll next search his browser bookmarks (via autocomplete) and then search MSDN via Google. He’ll pick the class or function that looks highest-level or most relevant and browse through the QuickStart, Code Samples, and Guides to understand the API.
If it’s still unclear how the API works, Dev 2 looks harder for code samples. He’ll start with a Samples Gallery search, and if that doesn’t work, he’ll search through a downloaded .zip file of our code samples. If Dev 2 isn’t sure how to use the API to implement his feature, he’ll try searching Google and/or Stack Overflow more broadly. He’ll abandon implementing the feature if he still can’t figure it out. Dev 2 has also abandoned less essential features that would have added improvements to his app – such as a neat visual effect or transition – when it’s unclear from the online docs what he needs to know to implement them.
Improve Search – MVP This section describes a typical usage scenario for a developer arriving from a search landing (parachuting in) on a deep API reference page and adding checkboxes to the navigation control to quickly and easily navigate to a different presentation API.
Overview & Scope: Windows store APIs are the backbone of any app. For Windows apps to be successful, developers must be able to quickly and easily find relevant APIs, thus improving app quality and speeding up development time.
Research: From developer feedback, the AppBar API control uses similar namespaces for two different platforms; devs are frustrated by not being able to quickly pivot to their type of platform from so many languages (VB, XAML, HTML, JS, C, Win32 + DirectX, etc.) when searching. Research validated that developers are confused by the MS namespaces and are not finding the appropriate APIs for their application.
Hypothesis: Developers have difficulty finding relevant code examples quickly. The dev content resources are spread over multiple sites, making it virtually impossible to find them. App quality suffers due to a lack of needed documentation. Plus, Windows has numerous dated support systems.
Indieshopper.com – The Vision “IndieShopper is a boutique of up-and-coming designers with a little urban grit; Shop Independent is a great place for those who fancy accessories a little off the straight and narrow. In particular, their belts are hipster gear central. Indie Shopper is the hottest designer boutique for today’s freshest fashion designers in the county.” Quote: Style Magazine.
Indieshopper.com – The End We’re dedicated to finding the hottest emerging fashion designer labels nationwide—no need to travel to Melrose Avenue in L.A. or SoHo in New York. You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for something original, something hip (and sweatshop-free). This was the guiding principle.
The most surprising artist submission was from SteveO from Jack Ass. At that time JackAss was a considerable rave and SteveO was the movie star. I had to put that his image front and center of the website. That was a good time, but in 2007, when the economy collapsed, so did sales, so I decided to take my innovations to Microsoft.
Black Eyed Peas Band The most prominent Artist, BuckyJonson, and band members from the BlackEyed Peas agreed upon an exclusive partnership with indieshopper.com. The site featured an exclusive song by Fergie (Vapors). In exchange, Indieshopper.com would build a customer landing page to sell band merch and market to its fan base to validate proof of concept.
The Business Pivot – Jungle Green The Big Bet – The Black-Eyed Peas band management contacted me, and they wanted to collaborate to sell band merch with independent artists. Up-and-coming bands would have a way to sell merch to Indie Artists. The vision is to build a cross-fusion of independent fashion and street culture for independent designers. The partnership with brands would be to create a co-branded site in exchange for your exclusive online merchandiser. In business mode, I continued to develop strategic partnerships with various music bands and urban clothing vendors.
Marketing: Free Press Knowing you have product market fit when the site stats start showing traffic without doing any marketing. Free traffic without having to hire a publicist to write editorials. At IndieShoppers’ website peak, it had 2k brands and was cash-positive.
Wired.com (Press Mention) – The best seller was Ray Gun Buckle by “Han Cholo” which was featured in wired.com news article. Business 101- Partner with the best up-and-coming independent brands. My top vendor was Han Cholo the hottest jewelry designer coming out of LA. His jewelry is seen on many A-list celebrities, including his biggest fan, Snoop-Dogg. I sold a lot of Brass-Ring belt buckles.
Indieshopper.com – MVP/GTM Phase Three: 10/31/05 (Halloween) site went live with only five vendors. 11/15/05: First online sale of BodyRocks necklace! 1/5/06: In a few months, 80 vendors. 3/23/06: Sales hit $10k with 240 vendors. The startup went from Crawl, Walk, to Run in under two years. My goal was to start leveling up the caliber of vendors and streamline the merchant’s internal tool systems. I added a Message Center to communicate with vendors 1:1. Reduced the order fulfillment to 1-3 min to process an online order, including automated emailing PDF shipping labels.
Indieshopper.com e-commerce site (9 months) Phase Two – I cloned the directory site with over 10k prospective vendors. I hired developers to build all the features needed to complete a full e2e marketplace website. I was on a budget, so all code libraries must use open-source libraries and PHP. I was one of the early adopters using API’s from Woo Commerce, PayPal, USPS, and a custom CMS system. Vendors could register and publish products to the store in 10 minutes. I designed and prototyped the entire site using Image Maps and Dreamweaver to hardcode functioning pages, then published the designs for developers’ review. This is the best method to communicate functionality requirements to offshore developers. This is how InVision started and Figma perfected it.
ShopIndependent.com – Proof of Concept (3 months) Phase One: The beginning from the sale of a dot com, I decided to build an Ad banner exchange directory to foster vendor relationships and understand the indie market. The goal was to find the hottest independent up-and-coming designers and market to them as a free resource to promote their website. In exchange, they would put a banner on their site for Free or pay to have direct placement. The number of new brands interested validated the POC and helped drive vendor awareness for indieshopper.com. I used all the questionable SEO tricks and cornered the search keyword term “indie” before Google changed its algorithm. At its peak, the site had over 10k referrers and half a million unique visitors. The site generates over $3k monthly from Google AdSense and placed ads.