Working at Erento

I joined Erento as a Senior Product Designer. During my first year I implemented a design system to help the team ship faster, more consistently and with an updated design. Shortly after, I was promoted to Product Lead and led 2-week development sprints alongside the CTO and CEO.

Erento was a profitable company with a significant presence in the rental sector. Our founders prioritized steady, stable growth over ambitious, exponential expansion. This strategic direction enabled Erento to operate extremely effectively as a small company.

As the sole product manager and designer, I worked closely with our lead engineers, CTO, and business intelligence specialists to maintain a smooth operation. Month over month and year over year, our revenue consistently increased, and our team regularly met their quarterly targets.

Data driven design

One of the key factors in Erento's success was our data-driven standards. Every decision, user story, idea, or solution had to be supported by real, tangible data. Working this way was extremely refreshing; unlike many other startups I have been part of, Erento invested significant time, money, and effort into gathering that data before committing to any work, and it absolutely paid off.

For small improvements, we would run AB tests and gather results for at least one week before making decisions based on the outcomes.

For bigger improvements that couldn't be measured with simple front-end code, we would conduct user-testing with realistic prototypes. These prototypes would serve both quantitative and qualitative purposes, the latter usually being conducted in-house and on-site.

Redesigning the SERP

One of our most successful and bigger platform improvements involved changing the Search Engine Results Page. The priority and goal was to convert more users with a design update.

My research consisted of assessing platforms with similar marketplace strategies, heatmapping on our current SERP, assessing user-activity and drop-offs for the current funnel and highlighting key factors of the decision making process for our users.

After this, I conducted surveys and put together various prototypes to test based on all the research. The results looked really promising-- so I got the go-ahead and went to work with the re-design.

The original Search Engine Results Page (SERP) featured a grid view, with each result displayed in a card-like design. The filtering options were fixed at the top, forcing users to scroll back up to adjust their search parameters after viewing the first few results.

This layout proved problematic for our users, who primarily sought to scan for specific details. Grid views are more suitable for image-heavy content, such as photo galleries or Pinterest boards. However, for our purpose, it wasn't as intuitive or efficient.

Recognizing this, I proposed and implemented a list-view design instead. These changes significantly enhanced the user experience, making the SERP more functional and aligned with our users' needs.

It provided more space to include important details for each result.
It improved overall legibility, making it easier for users to scan through information.
It allowed us to relocate the frequently used filter options to a sticky sidebar on the left side of the page.

These changes enhanced the user experience, making the SERP more functional and aligned with our users' needs.

Outcome

The design update improved SERP2ENQ (our top conversion metric) by an impressive 18% and SERP2CALL by 8%.
Reduced funnel conversion time by 18 seconds, reducing the overall selection time for a Buyer.
Improved average PDP visit rate by 5% from 2.57 to 2.7, including a 6.5% visit rate on mobile devices.
Improved the filter usage by a whopping 52% on desktop, and 28% usage rate on mobile.
The top listings have much more visibility, garnering 75% of the clicks

Weekly AB Testing

In order to maximize output, we started having a weekly AB testing meeting where a few leads would get together a brainstorm ideas to put to the test. We aimed for 2-3 tests each sprint cycle, and many of our ideas were inspired by previous data insights gathered from user activity and usability testing.

This tests were usually uncomplicated to reproduce, for example, changing copywriting, hiding an element or switching around some colors.

In this AB test, we added additional copy beneath the "total price" the PDP page because there was an uncontrolled discrepancy on prices displayed and actual price after seller negotiations.

This change resulted in a 15% conversion rate against the original.

In another AB test, we tested opening PDPs from SERP on a different tab to filter out more serious buyers. Considering the amount of traffic we had, we always made sure to gather at least 10,000 unique sessions, and in some cases, at least 50,000 before comparing data.

This change resulted in a 4% higher conversation rate against the original.

Public Speaking

In 2019, I was invited to speak about my cost-effective user-testing method at the annual Russmedia CTO meetup. Following this, I traveled and assisted numerous organizations all over Germany to implement user testing as a new standard approach to product ideation.

What I learned working at Erento

Gathering data and testing beforehand is almost always worth it before committing to decisions leading up to development
You don't need always need a large budget or big timeframe in order to validate designs. There is always a way to get insights.
Incredible team work and leadership makes all the difference in team efficiency. Erento was one of the few companies I worked at that consistently hit their targets, and it was 100% due to our team dynamics. Our team had an extremely high employee retention rate, and stayed small while maintaing steady growth over time.