Conversion Optimization

In 2008 I was hired as the first in-house product designer at a Polish eCommerce startup, Nokaut.pl. Before I joined, design was either outsourced or done by engineers. Shortly after coming on board I noticed that most of the team considered design to be mere decoration.

Nokaut.pl was consumer-focused, and this disregard for design was starting to harm the business. To help the company grow I had to introduce a proper user-centered design process and prove the value of design. The beginnings were not easy — but thanks to my mentor, the co-founder and VP of Product, I found a way: direct collaboration with engineers, and constant work on business metrics.

In 2009 I was trusted with optimizing critical elements of the Nokaut.pl product page — really a collection of millions of individual pages, one per product, which collectively had the largest impact on overall conversion.

Together with the engineering team we worked out a series of hypotheses grounded in the factors that affect human attention — contrast, color, movement, pattern — and ran a series of multivariate split tests.

My role was as much about the team as the tests: running workshops to help engineers understand the value of design, showing how knowledge of human cognition leads to better business results, leading the collaborative “state the design hypothesis” exercise, and then wireframing, prototyping, and analyzing the results.

One test — the contrast and color of the primary buttons — led to 24% conversion rate growth and changed Nokaut.pl forever.

The change was exciting for the entire team and was essential in establishing a real design process in the organization. Soon after, I was promoted to the leadership team.