Zola: The Creation of a New Business Unit
Designing an actionable, inspiration-driven wedding vendor platform to connect couples with wedding vendors.
Background
Zola’s long term mission is to become the most innovative and trusted source for the entire couple journey, from pre-engagement to post-newlywed life. Having already serviced more than half a million couples and expanded their business from a Wedding Registry startup to a suite of wedding products, Zola is well-positioned to grow their business to encompass the largest wedding bucket spend: wedding vendors.
My Role: From Proof of Concept to MVP Launch and Beyond
Prior to my full-time hire, I was a consultant for Zola in 2017. Partnering with another UX designer, we conducted research, created various concepts, prototyped, and ran user tests for the founders. Following the success of the proof of concept, the company acquired a wedding content company and launched Zola’s own vendor directory and wedding submission engine (bringing their total real weddings to 40k+).
In 2019, the founders reached out to hire me full time as the Senior Director of Product Design. As the second hire after the product GM, we conducted vendor and couple research to onboard vendors, designed the foundational pieces for the business unit, and grew the team to over 40+ employees, which included three Lead Product Designers, two Product Designers, an iOS product designer, and a two Product Design Freelancers within two years.
For this business unit, I directly managed three product design leads, two product designers, and three freelancers in the past 2+ years.
I also manage daily stakeholder relationships for this business unit which include the President, CEO, CMO and CDO.
Simultaneously, I also led and grew the Product Design Department 4x since I joined, which included all other product designers across all other Zola business units.
Proof of concept sketches workshop session
The Opportunity: Pulling early-funnel couples into the Zola ecosystem
There is a vast opportunity to acquire early-funnel couples during the inspiration phase of their pre-engaged/early-engaged journey that leads couples to connect with vendors that can deliver on their wedding vision. By capturing wedding preferences early on, such as wedding date, location, budget, style, and more, we are able to better serve relevant content and cross-sells for our other products.
The Vendor Discovery product is in green. View the full size Zola Couple Wedding Journey Map
We connect vendors and couples through two couple-facing products: Real Weddings & Vendor Marketplace
Real Weddings: Vendor-linked inspiration for early funnel couples
Couples can easily discover their wedding tastes across multiple facets: location preferences, styles, seasons, and more. When couples decide on these initial anchors, they are more ready to inquire with vendors.
Couples can search and browse real weddings, which include albums tagged and directly linked to vendors on Marketplace.
Early mocks for an image-first visual search platform powered by decoupled wedding images
Cross-functional design workshop
Vendor Marketplace: Connecting qualified couples and vendors
This platform helps couples find, inquire with, and manage pre-vetted wedding vendors that meet their preferences. In 2020, our two-sided marketplace went through rapid city expansion from a single city to covering ~50% of all national wedding markets by EOY. See our hypotheses and tests to increase conversion for this platform.
The Vendor-Facing Experience
Building vendor supply was our first step to building the entire Vendor Discovery ecosystem. Partnering with the Vendor team, we researched and tested concepts and UX with vendors to build out vendor acquisition, onboarding flows, listing page creation and management, couples lead management tools, connect/decline flows, vendor community experiences, and more.
Monetization of the Business Unit
Unlike other competitors that charge a standard subscription fee, independent of quality or quantity of leads, we decided to differentiate with a credit-based, multi-package solution. We offered a free product (our MVP) for one year to learn, iterate, and build vendor supply. View the Monetization Project
Vendor Discovery in the Zola App (MVP)
EOY 2020: my direct report and iOS product designer and I launched the MVP for app parity to Vendor Marketplace and Real Weddings. Since app users are typically 10 months out from their wedding, they are our target early funnel users.
65% of all inquiries have been coming from the app (vs. web) since it’s release
67% of new app sign ups Marketplace-first users (vs. other Zola products)
Vendor Marketplace drives couples to inquire with vendors.
Real Weddings helps couples make key wedding preference decisions and nudges couples back to Marketplace.
The Zola Design System & Marketing/Creative
After my hire, I championed and facilitated the formal formation of the Zola Design System Team. I also naturally partner closely with our Creative and Marketing teams.
Samples from our Zola Design System
Couple-facing marketing samples for Vendor Marketplace across social, CRM, and on-site cross-sells.
Overall, early data shows:
We are capturing early funnel couples
60% of couples are inquiring with venues, proving they are looking to book their very first vendor
67% of new app sign ups start with Vendor Discovery (versus other Zola products), and the addition of Vendor discover in the app is driving overall app signups to 3x our weekly average (as of 01/04/2021)
Couples are interested in gathering and saving wedding inspiration on Zola
Marketplace now accounts for 19% of unique signups by first account created (12/20) on web, compared to one year ago when it was 0.1% (12/19)
Couples’ saved Real Wedding images and “My Booked Vendors” are within our most popular pages, which shows couple interest in gathering and saving wedding inspiration and building out their vendor team with Zola
Couples are converting to other Zola products from Vendor Discovery
47% of Paper & Invites, and 52% of Registry users, are Vendor Discovery-first couples
Vendor Discovery-first couples are 29% more likely to convert on Paper & invites
There’s much to learn, and more to do
Snapshot of our living Vendor Discovery Service Blueprint.