The Trade Desk
A complete redesign, content rearchitecture and rebuild of the corporate website for pioneers of innovative programmatic ad software.
As the industry disruptor navigated a period of explosive growth the site introduced an updated brand identity to better reflect the company’s position in the space, and streamlined information about its products and services for prospective clients around the world.
On the back end, a significant platform upgrade to a central content management system with an intuitive user interface simplified the process for staff to contribute to the site, and for the first time allowed each global outpost to own the experience for their specific market.
Along with the core site, key external properties were also reimagined to elevate the entire ecosystem.
As senior consultant for digital experiences, led a distributed cross-discipline team end-to-end through the initiative:
- Audited the legacy platform and interviewed stakeholders to source requirements and redefine user journeys for multiple audiences, from prospects to investors.
- Authored a concise charter as the north star and outlined an 18-month roadmap to ship inside of a year, with a six-month post-launch window to release continuous improvements.
- Collaborated with designers and engineers to translate the complex visual style guide into a set of simple templates for authors to choose from, along with a modular kit of front-end React components that would flex, scale and allow for extensive reuse within the templates.
- Oversaw the migration from a self-hosted solution to the AWS cloud for a more reliable, scalable and performant system. Approved and merged pull requests in the CodeCommit source control repo, updated Cloudformation templates and configured the Cloudfront cache time-to-live.
- Managed an external vendor through the production of a headless Craft CMS back-end, API content service and serverless SPA front-end. Generated all user stories and employed Kanban-based agile methodology through prioritization, story point estimation and backlog grooming ceremonies.
- Sourced a dynamic AI/ML translation service to assist authors across markets with content creation - a cornerstone of the new system that automated the process, reduced the frequency of errors and sped turnaround times.
- Trained staff on the system through a series of interactive workshops, and organized a central knowledge base to house resources and a feedback loop for users.
- Drafted a plan to migrate content to the updated platform and supervised associates through the transition of assets. Also applied current SEO best practices to the legacy pages which resulted in a considerable boost in SERP rank, impressions and click-through rates across the site.
- Defined and implemented robust site analytics and lead capture mechanisms to measure the success of the site relative to historical data and industry benchmarks, and advocated that the company employ an A/B test and experimentation tool for the first time, in concert with Google Analytics and Adobe Marketo. The site exceeded expectations in every category.
- Consulted with other groups across the company that owned external, loosely connected properties, like the talent acquisition portal, and advised on how to align these to the core site for a cohesive set of experiences. Liaised with suppliers like Workday and SkillJar on behalf of those with limited resources to help execute that vision.