As an experienced leader, I specialize in category management, optimizing e-commerce experiences, developing strategic roadmaps, and creating safe and inclusive environments.
eCommerce & Affiliates
During my eight-year tenure at ATK, I made significant contributions to the shopping experience and affiliate business. I diversified product offerings, expanded our affiliate networks, led platform transitions and redesigns, and delivered exceptional user experiences, transforming how customers shopped with ATK. With attention to detail and a deep understanding of customer experience, I navigated the challenges of an ever-evolving e-commerce landscape, always prioritizing the user. As a result, my contributions enhanced the shopping experience and grew the business, making the ATK shop a destination for fans seeking ATK product recommendations, exclusive and unique products, and a seamless shopping experience.
eCommerce
In 2020, I managed a large-scale project that involved migrating the ATK shop from Magento 1.0 to Magento 2.0. This migration resulted in a complete site redesign, which included various new features, improved SEO, accessibility, and payment options. My responsibilities included overseeing the project's end-to-end execution and roadmap development, as well as managing multiple teams, both internally and externally, to ensure that the project stayed on track and within budget.
Feature Enhancements & Custom Development
Magento 2.0 Migration
Improved Checkout
Alternate Payment Options
Custom Related Product Tags
Improved SEO
Mega Menu Navigation
Improved Accessibility
Custom Inventory Feeds
Custom OOS Monitoring
Custom Product Lables
Auto Custom Stock Status
Free Shipping Calculator
Custom Landing Pages
Custom Product Types
and so much more…
My team was responsible for collaborating with our marketing team to execute Exclusive Deal campaigns. We procured the necessary products and then worked together to manage the promotional calendar and project lifecycle. Our tasks included initiating a product brief, monitoring the project lifecycle, and providing final approval before the launch.
These efforts produced beautiful long-form content emails that provided in-depth information about why these items were an ATK top pick. We had many successful campaigns using this format. For instance, on separate occasions, we sold over 4,000 ChefChoice knife sharpeners, over 3,000 Matfer Bourgeat 12" carbon steel skillets, and 2,400 Zwilling Santoku knives within 24 hours. Below are some examples of these long-form emails.
Affiliates
We collaborated with the Product, UX, and Design teams to come up with a multi-retailer approach. As a result, we enabled the option to add up to four retailers for each recommended product on our website, americastestkitchen.com.
To expand our affiliate networks, my team added new partners, such as Impact, Pepperjam, ShareASale, and CJ. Furthermore, we established and managed direct partnerships with several entities, including Sur La Table, Amazon, ThermoWorks, and more.
After conducting performance analysis and market research, I presented to the executive leadership team the need to diversify and expand our affiliate networks. At that time, all our affiliate revenue was generated through two primary partners. In order to ensure sustained and long-term growth, I felt it was crucial for us to introduce more partners into our affiliate program and expand our earnings potential.
The final result was a content-based shopping experience that allowed ATK subscribers to comp shop directly on our site. This prevented customers from leaving to do their own research and price comparison, leading to a significant increase in engagement and clicks to our expanded networks.
When this program launched, we saw a 65% increase in EPC, and a 27% increase in clicks, which helped stem the decline we were seeing from Amazon.
Exclusive Branded Merch
When I first joined America's Test Kitchen, the main source of eCommerce revenue came from the sales of our cookbooks. However, I soon realized we could expand our product line to include exclusive ATK-branded merchandise. Our loyal and committed fan base made it clear that they wanted to purchase more than just our cookbooks. To fulfill this demand, my team and I closely collaborated with our designers to create a range of everyday and limited edition branded merchandise that would only be available at the ATK Shop. Here are some examples of our efforts.
Apparel
Accessories & Home
Partnerships
Through our ever-expanding branded merchandise business, we were fortunate to establish partnerships with exceptional brands, elevating our branded merchandise offering even further. Those partnerships included brands such as MiiR, Spice House, Baggu, Hedley & Bennett, as well as a collaboration with long-time ATK partner artist John Burgoyne. Below are some examples of those partnerships.
Hedley & Bennett
MiiR
Spice House
Baggu
Cook’s Illustrated Artist John Burgoyne
Highly-Rated Equipment
During my time at America's Test Kitchen, I was tasked with launching the Exclusive Deals and Kits for the Cook business lines. Within the first two years of launching these business lines, we added over $2M to ATK's revenue stream and grew the e-commerce business by 34%, AOV increased by 21% and conversion by 7% in 2020 and then by another 21% in 2021.
Exclusive Deals
Our Exclusive Deal business offered a limited number of monthly deals to ATK subscribers featuring our highly recommended kitchen products reviewed by ATK Reviews. We collaborated with several popular brands, including Technivorm, Cuisinart, Wusthof, Le Creuset, Zwilling, Oxo, and many others, to provide our audience with our best-rated equipment at exclusive savings.
Kits for Cooks
We launched our Exclusive Deals business line while simultaneously working on our Kits for Cooks product offering. The idea was to combine ATK's award-winning cookbooks with our highly-rated equipment, providing home cooks with a comprehensive cooking solution. These kits were designed to equip customers with everything needed to start cooking within a specific category. Perfect for new or curious cooks. Some of our most successful kits included the Essential Knife Set, Cast Iron Kit, Smart Carving Kit, and Prep Station.
SEO & Accessibility
SEO and accessibility were always at the forefront of optimizing the ATK shop. Here are two projects that took our efforts to the next level!
SEO
In 2023, ATK underwent organizational changes that significantly decreased marketing efforts directed toward the ATK Shop. As a result, we quickly realized the need to improve our visibility to non-ATK subscribers and enhance our Google product rankings.
Our team worked enthusiastically to enhance the user experience across the site. We redesigned the homepage and product pages to make them cleaner and more efficient, optimized the site structure, updated every product in our catalog to ensure consistent formatting and best-in-class keywords and metadata, and added product schema updates to ensure Google scraped the correct information.
Through our efforts, ATK Shop's products ranked higher in search results, resulting in a 54% increase in organic traffic and a 94% increase in Google Merchant clicks by the end of 2023. Furthermore, we discovered that organic traffic generated 15-20% higher average order value (AOV).
Accessibility
In 2021, we collaborated with Perkins School of the Blind to ensure that our shop met all the accessibility standards. The process started with an audit of our site by Perkins, which resulted in a list of recommendations. I created a roadmap based on these recommendations involving our engineering, design, and UX teams. We tackled several projects, including:
Updated and added descriptive titles, links, and functional controls where possible.
Updated color palettes to ensure optimal contrast.
Right-sized text to ensure readability.
Added descriptive alt text to every image across the site.
Ensured the shop was 100% keyboard friendly.
Redesigned product pages to remove tabs and other elements that may not work well with screen readers.
These efforts led to a significant improvement in our accessibility score and ensured our site was accessible and shoppable to all.