Behaviour varies by region
Content that sold well in one market did nothing in another.
Flixmedia
Brand content on retailer websites. Three chapters from 2019 to 2024.
The short version
- What it is
- Flixmedia puts brands’ product content, such as videos and feature grids, on retailer websites.
- Who for
- Brands and their marketing managers, and the shoppers who read the content.
- What I did
- As Lead PM I led a one-year re-architecture, a UI redesign and a self-serve tool. Before that I delivered 200+ projects as Product Owner.
200+ projects: October 2019 to February 2023, with 97% delivered on time against the team’s on-time target.
- What happened
- After the UI redesign, click-through rose 110.12% and add-to-cart rose 40%. Self-serve saved about £10k a quarter.
Lead PM years, 2023 to 2024. Click-through and add-to-cart compared before and after the redesign. The saving is an estimate of developer time no longer spent on small edits.
- What I’d change
- Decide what to measure before the build. Twice we found the old measures told us little.
Two minutes? Read the five lines. Each chapter ends with its result.
Start with chapter 3: the tool that took small edits off the developers.
Start with chapter 1: one content block became modules we could measure.
Content syndication for brands and retailers.
Chapter 1. Lead PM, 2023 to 2024
From one block to modules
A one-year re-architecture, so we could see which part of the content sold.
Brands wanted content fitted to each shopper. Our platform could not do that. It treated each brand’s content as one block.
So nobody could test, personalise or credit a single part, such as a video or a feature grid. Marketing managers kept asking one question: “Which part of my content actually drove the sale?”
Before One block, no detail
One content block
After Modules we could measure
- Hero video
- Feature grid
- Key selling points bar
- And many more modules
What I did
- Won sign-off from the C-suite and the parent company. Other work had to wait.
- Asked partners what reports they needed.
- Ran two development teams, tech and analytics, through the build.
- Wrote the user stories and acceptance criteria.
- Agreed new tracking measures to replace the old ones.
- Led the analysis after launch, with the shopper insights team.
What we found
First, the old “impression” measure was flawed, so we redefined success. Then four patterns stood out.
The retailer matters
Results changed between premium and value retail sites.
Position matters
Where a module sat on the page moved with add-to-cart.
More is not always better
Past a few modules, add-to-cart stopped rising, on average.
Analysis after launch with the shopper insights team, 2023 to 2024. These are patterns in the data, not controlled tests.
What it set up
- Roadmap I wrote
Group shoppers by how they behave, using the new data. - Roadmap I wrote
Reorder modules for each group, with the most effective first. - Roadmap I wrote
Use AI to set the order, and later the copy, for each shopper.
Chapter 2. A UI redesign
Fixing the AR button
“Point and Place” let shoppers see a product, such as a TV or a washing machine, in their own room. It worked. But few people used it.
I looked at user feedback, what retailers told us and what competitors did. Two problems came out.
A button nobody recognised
The AR button and banner were busy and animated. They did not look like the AR buttons shoppers knew from other sites, so people held back.
Numbers that said nothing
We counted rotations and zooms. That data was noisy. It told us nothing about what worked.
Before Busy, animated, unfamiliar
After One clear button
The before panel is an illustration: the old button is no longer online. The after panel is the live button, redrawn.
What we changed
- A simple AR icon on the product images, the kind shoppers already knew.
- A clearer in-page banner, with plain instructions.
- We stopped counting rotations and zooms.
- We tracked the one thing that mattered: click-through on the new button.
- click-through rate
- +110.12%
- add-to-cart actions
- +40%
Lead PM years, 2023 to 2024. Click-through and add-to-cart compared before and after the UI redesign.
Chapter 3. Lead PM, 2023 to 2024
Self-serve comparison tables
Clients bought comparison tables for each product category. They loved them. But every small change needed a developer.
Death by a thousand edits
Add a product, remove one, change a spec. Each tiny change took developer time and joined a queue. Clients waited, and developers lost time for bigger work.
Sorting that could not keep up
Tables could only sort by size or price. Clients wanted more, such as pushing a new product or clearing old stock.
Before Every change went through a developer
- The client asks for a change
- Our team raises a ticket
- It joins a sprint
- A developer makes the change
- It goes live days or weeks later
After The client does it
- The client edits the table in the tool
- They set their own display rules
- They publish at once
- saved each quarter, about
- £10k
Lead PM years, 2023 to 2024. An estimate of developer time no longer spent on small edits. Clients now made those changes themselves, at once.
Before that. Product Owner, October 2019 to February 2023
200+ projects, 97% on time
I ran end-to-end delivery of e-commerce content projects for brands around the world, across several teams.
200+ projects, October 2019 to February 2023. 97% delivered on time, measured against the team’s on-time delivery target.
Building for brands or retailers?
Tell me what you are working on. I read every message.