As the product lead for Vanity Fair, I worked as the product owner for the brand's digital presence. This included the website, interactive reading experiences, email products, digital features for tentpole events, monetization initiatives, and more. I worked on products that focus on user retention and engagement, growth on emerging platforms, and new revenue streams.

In my role I collaborated cross-functionally and managed stakeholder relationships. I worked closely with engineering, design, analytics, consumer marketing, sales, ad tech, and editorial to build data- and user-driven products that help achieve our KPIs. In 2018 we won a Webby Award for Best Magazine Website.

Paywall 

In 2018, after a months-long process we launched a metered paywall on vanityfair.com. Users hit the paywall after reading four free articles each month, after which they must sign up for a subscription to continue reading. This was by far one of the most challenging and exciting products I've worked on. We invested heavily in the discovery and research phases using qualitative and quantitative analyses to help inform the product strategy. In collaboration with a large team and many stakeholders, we defined and designed the entire user experience, created success metrics, developed a marketing plan, implemented the technical requirements, and outlined strategies for user acquisition and the purchase user flow. By building a brand-new revenue stream, we were able to help future-proof the business and the brand. 

Interactive Experiences | Game of Unknowns

To capitalize on the fact that "Game of Thrones" content accounts for 3 percent of VF’s total yearly traffic we launched an interactive game for fans called Game of Unknowns. Users could predict what would happen over the course of the season by creating a custom game board and selecting 12 out of 64 possible events. After each episode they could check back to see whether any of their predictions came true. To roll out the product, we timed it with the season 7 premiere and developed robust social, marketing, and content strategies.

We also built a weekly "Game of Thrones"-themed newsletter to connect with users and drive them back to site. The newsletter boasted an impressive 71 percent click-to-open rate. While defining the product strategy for Game of Unknowns we were also beginning work on the forthcoming paywall. This allowed us to validate our hypothesis about whether a user was willing to provide something (in this case, their email) in exchange for access to something they cared about (in this case, being able to play the game). As a result of the game we acquired more than 25,000 new accounts from users who signed up to play. 

Email Strategy Overhaul

We implemented a complete overhaul of our email strategy. We redesigned the products to improve the reading experience, optimize for mobile, support new sales opportunities, and incorporate ADA compliancy rules. To help drive awareness to these new products we implemented sign-up features onsite, including contextual units in high-value placements.

We also created a centralized hub where users could see and sign up for all of our email products. We tapped into content that we knew was important to our users and launched three new newsletters: Hive P.S., Royal Watch, and HWD Daily. The results paid off—Royal Watch now boasts the highest open rate of all six newsletter products; the combined list size increased by 47 percent, and we were able to generate revenue by selling direct campaigns in the newly designed emails. 

Responsive Ballots 

Vanity Fair is one of the major players when it comes to Hollywood and award season coverage. We wanted to take a mobile-first approach to complement this type of content, which resulting in us building interactive ballots for the Oscars and Emmys. The responsive ballots provided new sponsorship opportunities with brands like Apple, Dacor, and Genesis, and created a game-like experience that helped foster engagement and recirculation onsite. Users spent 3x the amount of time on the interactive ballots compared to an average piece of content. Using analytics from the previous year's Oscars ballot, we iterated on the product and saw a 22 percent increase YOY in unique visits. 

Vertical Galleries

To improve the user experience on our galleries, we introduced a vertical version. Taking into account our users' current habits we knew that there was room for improvement compared to the slow-loading and disjointed horizontal gallery that existed. In addition to improving the UX, we needed to make sure that we maintained or surpassed average impressions per pageview for revenue purposes. After launch we saw completion rates increase by 62 percent and time spent increase by 25 percent. 

Re-imagined Franchises

The New Establishment List is a brand franchise that recognizes 100 innovators each year, and consists of a print feature and livestreamed multi-day summit. We wanted to represent the list in an easy-to-consume format that highlighted the top pieces of information about each person. We created a custom longform reading experience that allowed users to navigate through the list from top to bottom or via category filters. With the new format we saw pageviews per visit increase by 10 percent. To promote and drive users to the livestream, we developed a global video banner that could be controlled by edit and programmed to feature whatever speech was happening at that time. The banner lead to a 28 percent increase YOY in livestream views.