Hometalk
Hometalk, the leading online DIY publisher, provides content on trending and seasonally relevant Home & Garden DIY decor and improvement projects and tips. This is the place where people can post and describe their DIY projects and get feedback and questions from the community.
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Keep students engaged with an all-in-one academic and campus mobile app (and yes... campusM with a lowercase c :) )
Feed Stream;
Problem & Solutions
Overview
On Hometalk there are thousands of posts, uploaded by people who LOVE DIY and that are passioned about it. Posts can be blog posts, questions and project books - a gallery of posts. However, people were dropping off after a few seconds. I wanted to change that and keep them long on the page as possible. Therefore, I worked on several solutions to achieve this goal and make sure the user stays longer. on Hometalk.
Rich feed stream
CONTEXT - In the past the feed of the DIY posts was not organized and all posts looked the same with no hierarchy. I came up with a feed structure, where the DIY posts are divided into sections and that each group has a context that will ease the browsing process for the users.
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SHAPE AND SIZE - The feed used to be all in the same shape and size, small lines of text and all left alight in rows. I created different containers that match the content - if it's a post, a square box to fit text and image, if it is a question, a rectangle that sometime can include an image if there is one and a container for video that focuses on the screen shot from the film with a play button on top
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KEEP IT GOING - Instead of having a button after few posts to load more posts, I suggested to let it go... and as long as the user keeps scrolling to provide as many posts as quested.
[ New feed redesign ]
DIY Video
Tutorial
Overview
Reading posts is fun and easy, but many times it's hard to explain how to actually to create a project in words and even the pictures can not always deliver the texture of the concrete when creating a plant or how to make a curve in the woods. Not only that, some users quest for knowledge by reading and some prefer watching instead or both. Therefor, we started the Hometalk TV where people can actually watch a DIY tutorial and on-top of that, also can comment and ask questions on LIVE, while actually filming a DIY project. Similar to the consumers, also with content creators, some are more verbal or better performer than writers and a video content page is the optimal stage to present their DIY projects
Video page & Live DIY stream page
CONTENT - While in the beginning of hometalk, DIY projects where mostly curated by bloggers who share their passion to DIY, describe the process of creating a project and upload photos, I created a video page, where Vloggers can upload there videos, and people can comment and provide feedback. On this page type the video is the focus and layout is not dependent on the text.
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LIVE VIDEO - I created the entire process of the live video - from the moment an email is being sent with the option to save it to your calendar and get materials and tools ready before the video starts. During the live video watchers can comment, ask questions or give feedback. After the video is over the video is stored on the TV page.
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TV PAGE - Hometalk video tutorials can be found on the TV page divided to different categories such as: Painting, crafting decorating and more.
[ Live video page ]
A DIY Story Teller
Overview
Writing a DIY post is not an easy task. The users are not always familiar with writing a DIY story and this caused a situation where the posts didn't have a consistent structure and in many lots of posts where messy just because the process of creating the post wasn't broken into structured chunks. I lead the flow of the post creation and designed the activity page accordingly.
Post Page Restructure
POSTING - At first, the posting process was- uploading the text as one unit and uploading the photos separately. I lead the change, and created the flow of posting, creating units of text and photos and adding more units as needed with the possibility also to add titles for each section, materials & cost, estimated time and difficulty level
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POST PAGE - I designed the page to reflect the posting process. Adding a summary on the top- to allow users to decide when landing on the page if the DIY project is suitable for them - by being able to see the time and cost of the project.
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FREESTYLE - Although the post is structured , for the comfot of the poster, they can decide the text length, photos with or without text, providing information such as cost or difficulty is optional. They can also save the post as a draft and keep editing it later.
[ On the right a DIY post on desktop | on the left, the posting widget on mobile]
More projects at Hometalk
Monetization
Every page on Hometalk has ads. My role was to increase number of page use and stay on site. Below are some examples of monetization projects on Hometalk i was in charge of.
Increase page views
Every page on Hometalk has ads. My role was to increase number of page use and stay on site. The arrow on the right converted 12% more than the next button that used to be on the bottom of the page.
Complex content
As mentioned before, to increase page view, I created a project book - a collection of related DIY projects that were manually selected to increase user's engagement.
Retention
My role was to convert as many new users as possible. I created different sign-ups flows and A/B tested on different user cohorts
and made sure that numbers are increasing segnificantly.
Amazon's Affiliates
Users post their materials and also and materials can be pulled by the keywords. Hometalk became an Amazon affiliate and increased revenue even more. This project also achieved assisting the users with the right material for their DIY projects