Hi!
My name is Melissa, and I recently joined LaunchDarkly. I'd like to introduce myself and share why I now wear a LaunchDarkly tee.
I'm a designer. UX, UI, branding, marketing, strategy—you name it. My previous role was design manager at a large online retailer, which you know but I won't name. This online retailer asked me to join a small team to build a sister site with the goal of testing new shopping experiences that were too risky for the main site. There were one product manager, two designers, and three developers.
The challenge.
We designed and built a live MVP of this new e-commerce platform in 3.5 months. But then we faced a new challenge: how do you direct customers to an entirely new and much more progressive experience without scaring away loyal users or disturbing sales?
The solution.
We decided to invite a small percentage of a particular customer segment to view the website, a process called Canary Launch. For us, this looked like a few ads populating the main site, but only visible to 1% of our chosen customer segment. We were able to monitor the impact on sales on the main site and felt confident to increase visibility to the ads. This process allowed the business stakeholders to be at ease and gave us the data we needed.
A new vision.
This release process was eye-opening for myself and the entire team. We had just come from the legacy site where the release cycles are long, and the risk of conflicting code is high. Even though we were excited about the strategy, it did take a lot of development time and wouldn't give the rest of the team access to the backend. We would ask the developers to fluctuate the ad visibility which would take them away from their primary focus.
This brings me back to why I now wear a LaunchDarkly tee. When I heard of their SaaS product, my last 24 months flashed before my eyes and the understanding of its value made me fall in love. Then I met the team. I was hooked.
I'm now excited to help share the message and am committed to helping companies of all sizes understand how LaunchDarkly can be a facilitator when it comes to faster and less risky product releases. After using the product for a few months, you will look back and wonder how you ever built without it.
I see a bright future for the “build, test, learn” model. The world is innovating at increasing speeds these days. You have to move just as fast to be competitive and deliver products and experiences that connect with your users.
