Photograph by Mike MacDonald
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In 2008 I joined Active Network as a front-end web developer for the Active.com domain, quickly adding design responsibilities. I soon volunteered to manage SEO for the entire site (500,000+ URL's), spearheading a campaign that resulted in a 41% increase in organic traffic in one year.
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In 2010, Active instituted a monthly "Innovation Meeting", allowing employees to pitch their ideas directly to senior leadership. My name quickly became synonymous with the innovation meeting thanks to the volume & frequency of my presentations. Of the 27 ideas I pitched over several years, 5 of those ultimately came to fruition. Below are some of the ideas I pitched.
Live Results
One pitch I made was for "live race results", giving runners and their families realtime race results using existing technology. At the time, results were not available until several days after the race was completed.
Brag button
Another concept I pitched was what I called the "brag" button. Active was always looking for ways to engage race registrants after their race had finished, and the brag button was a way to engage participants in a social way.
The brag button was the catalyst for similar functionality that was later implemented.
Sponsored page skins
Seeing a desperate need for creative advertising opportunities on Active.com, I created 3 examples of full-page sponsorships for Active.com's search page (the domain's second highest trafficked page).
ActiveAdvantage CRO
ActiveAdvantage was a membership rewards program responsible for much of Active's revenue, but it suffered from poor conversion performance due to a lackluster landing page. At the time, the concept of "long sales pages" was popular, and below was my take on a sales page that better reflected the value proposition.
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In 2011 I was selected as the sole front-end engineer and UX designer for a newly formed Light Engineering Group (LEG), Active's "swat team". This 4-member team of top performers was tasked with building high-priority projects for the CEO and COO.
Event registration funnel revamp
As the origination of all race registration revenue, Active's "event details" page was the single most important page on the site. As the front-end developer responsible for the page, I had numerous ideas of how to improve the page's conversion rate and improve overall UX.
Combining analytical data, roadmaps & personal observation, I chose 3 primary objectives:
1. Emphasize the primary "Register Now" call-to-action, including countdown timer for urgency
2. Highlight tangible ActiveAdvantage program benefits in order to improve membership
3. Unify and simplify the secondary actions (sharing, reminders and social)
Click the image below to see the functional prototype I built for this presentation.
