$900,000+
$900,000+
$900,000+
in sales, breaking the single-day sales record for The Hodinkee Shop
▲ 349%
▲ 349%
▲ 349%
Increase in shop sessions from the same date the previous year.
Team
Alex Fortney: UX Lead
Patrick Krisko: Software Engineer
(That’s right, just the two of us)
Problem
In 2022, Hodinkee held its first annual 10/10 event. Similar to Prime Day, 10/10 is a day where we celebrate our community by offering up something special.
Why 10/10, you ask? Because watch nerds like to take wrist shots of watches set to 10:10. It positions the hands just so, that you can see the dial’s logos and text details. At Hodinkee, we photograph all our watches at 10:10. It’s a nerd thing.
Our CEO, Jeff Fowler, came up with the idea in the shower, on September 30th.
Which meant, by the time the ELT was committed to the idea, we only had 5 days to design, build, and ship new features that would facilitate the promotion. The team was made up of just two product folks—my favorite tech lead ever, Pat, and myself.
Background
For the inaugural 10/10, we offered up 10 Rolex watches at MSRP, as well as 10% off all pre-owned watches across the site
For those unfamiliar with the watch market, many enthusiasts wait years for the opportunity to buy a popular Rolex model from a retailer (I myself waited 2.5 years for my GMT Master II), and buying secondhand often means paying up to 3x the MSRP for the watch of your dreams.
There isn’t a high margin on most pre-owned watch sales across the industry, so 10% off is a pretty significant chunk when you get into watches that run anywhere from $1k up to $50k.
Did I mention we had to pull this off in 5 days?
In 2022, Hodinkee held its first annual 10/10 event. Similar to Prime Day, 10/10 is a day where we celebrate our community by offering up something special.
Why 10/10, you ask? Because watch nerds like to take wrist shots of watches set to 10:10. It positions the hands just so, that you can see the dial’s logos and text details. At Hodinkee, we photograph all our watches at 10:10. It’s a nerd thing.
Our CEO, Jeff Fowler, came up with the idea in the shower, on September 30th.
Which meant, by the time the ELT was committed to the idea, we only had 5 days to design, build, and ship new features that would facilitate the promotion. The team was made up of just two product folks—my favorite tech lead ever, Pat, and myself.
Background
For the inaugural 10/10, we offered up 10 Rolex watches at MSRP, as well as 10% off all pre-owned watches across the site
For those unfamiliar with the watch market, many enthusiasts wait years for the opportunity to buy a popular Rolex model from a retailer (I myself waited 2.5 years for my GMT Master II), and buying secondhand often means paying up to 3x the MSRP for the watch of your dreams.
There isn’t a high margin on most pre-owned watch sales across the industry, so 10% off is a pretty significant chunk when you get into watches that run anywhere from $1k up to $50k.
Did I mention we had to pull this off in 5 days?
In 2022, Hodinkee held its first annual 10/10 event. Similar to Prime Day, 10/10 is a day where we celebrate our community by offering up something special.
Why 10/10, you ask? Because watch nerds like to take wrist shots of watches set to 10:10. It positions the hands just so, that you can see the dial’s logos and text details. At Hodinkee, we photograph all our watches at 10:10. It’s a nerd thing.
Our CEO, Jeff Fowler, came up with the idea in the shower, on September 30th.
Which meant, by the time the ELT was committed to the idea, we only had 5 days to design, build, and ship new features that would facilitate the promotion. The team was made up of just two product folks—my favorite tech lead ever, Pat, and myself.
Background
For the inaugural 10/10, we offered up 10 Rolex watches at MSRP, as well as 10% off all pre-owned watches across the site
For those unfamiliar with the watch market, many enthusiasts wait years for the opportunity to buy a popular Rolex model from a retailer (I myself waited 2.5 years for my GMT Master II), and buying secondhand often means paying up to 3x the MSRP for the watch of your dreams.
There isn’t a high margin on most pre-owned watch sales across the industry, so 10% off is a pretty significant chunk when you get into watches that run anywhere from $1k up to $50k.
Did I mention we had to pull this off in 5 days?
Discovery
Given the truncated timeline here, most of our research was competitive analysis. We looked at who had successfully (and unsuccessfully) executed “drops” on the internet. We looked at companies like Nike, ALD, and Telfar, to see what worked (and more importantly, what didn’t).
We wanted to build this as a raffle-style drop, but unfortunately, our legal team steered us away from that. There was concern around the legality of that both at home and abroad, given that it could be classified as gambling, and we didn’t have time to vet it. We ended up settling on the fastest-mouse method, relying heavily on captcha to prevent bots from buying up the watches.
Given the truncated timeline here, most of our research was competitive analysis. We looked at who had successfully (and unsuccessfully) executed “drops” on the internet. We looked at companies like Nike, ALD, and Telfar, to see what worked (and more importantly, what didn’t).
We wanted to build this as a raffle-style drop, but unfortunately, our legal team steered us away from that. There was concern around the legality of that both at home and abroad, given that it could be classified as gambling, and we didn’t have time to vet it. We ended up settling on the fastest-mouse method, relying heavily on captcha to prevent bots from buying up the watches.
Given the truncated timeline here, most of our research was competitive analysis. We looked at who had successfully (and unsuccessfully) executed “drops” on the internet. We looked at companies like Nike, ALD, and Telfar, to see what worked (and more importantly, what didn’t).
We wanted to build this as a raffle-style drop, but unfortunately, our legal team steered us away from that. There was concern around the legality of that both at home and abroad, given that it could be classified as gambling, and we didn’t have time to vet it. We ended up settling on the fastest-mouse method, relying heavily on captcha to prevent bots from buying up the watches.
Solution
A big part of the design process was working through the user journey with Pat, along with all the states we’d need to display on the page.
The user flow for 10/10 was meant to be fairly simple. The user would reach the hub from either the 10/10 article page, or from a persistent banner on the site for the day.
When a watch dropped, the page was built to refresh, display a link to the product page, and take the user to the page where they could then buy the watch.
One thing we wanted to be sure of was that we could provide kind of an uplifting moment for folks who didn’t win the watches. The reality was, there were only 10 watches. We wanted to offer up almost an easy letdown if someone didn’t get a watch, but also serve them up some similar watches, since they had their credit cards out, and were ready to spend some money.
A big part of the design process was working through the user journey with Pat, along with all the states we’d need to display on the page.
The user flow for 10/10 was meant to be fairly simple. The user would reach the hub from either the 10/10 article page, or from a persistent banner on the site for the day.
When a watch dropped, the page was built to refresh, display a link to the product page, and take the user to the page where they could then buy the watch.
One thing we wanted to be sure of was that we could provide kind of an uplifting moment for folks who didn’t win the watches. The reality was, there were only 10 watches. We wanted to offer up almost an easy letdown if someone didn’t get a watch, but also serve them up some similar watches, since they had their credit cards out, and were ready to spend some money.
A big part of the design process was working through the user journey with Pat, along with all the states we’d need to display on the page.
The user flow for 10/10 was meant to be fairly simple. The user would reach the hub from either the 10/10 article page, or from a persistent banner on the site for the day.
When a watch dropped, the page was built to refresh, display a link to the product page, and take the user to the page where they could then buy the watch.
One thing we wanted to be sure of was that we could provide kind of an uplifting moment for folks who didn’t win the watches. The reality was, there were only 10 watches. We wanted to offer up almost an easy letdown if someone didn’t get a watch, but also serve them up some similar watches, since they had their credit cards out, and were ready to spend some money.
Impact
The Good
Overall, the day was considered a huge success by leadership. We saw total sales reach nearly $900,000, and saw a 349% increase in shop sessions.
Unfortunately, we absolutely tanked our conversion rate for the month. We didn’t realize how many folks would get the watch in their cart, and then lose it when the first person checked out.
The Bad & The Ugly
We heard a lot of negative feedback from folks in the comments over this. We have a highly engaged, passionate community, and there were some strong feelings about the way things went.
We had issues with the hub page crashing all day. Honestly, we just didn’t expect this much traffic. We absolutely obliterated our conversion rate for the month, one of the team’s primary KPIs.
Postmortem
I always advise designers I work with not to get married to the things they make, and not to take negative feedback to heart. But the user feedback on this one was really hard not to take personally.
It bothered me so much that I pulled all our comments from the site and socials, and brought them into FigJam, where I sorted them into themes.
From there, I made a deck, and shared out the themes and findings with the rest of the company. It wasn’t fun. It felt like everyone was really excited about the event, and the results, and I was kind of a buzzkill. But, not unlike eating your vegetables, taking a hard look at your user feedback can be lame sometimes. It was really well received overall, and I’m glad we did it. It gave us a lot to learn from going into 10/10 for 2023.
The Good
Overall, the day was considered a huge success by leadership. We saw total sales reach nearly $900,000, and saw a 349% increase in shop sessions.
Unfortunately, we absolutely tanked our conversion rate for the month. We didn’t realize how many folks would get the watch in their cart, and then lose it when the first person checked out.
The Bad & The Ugly
We heard a lot of negative feedback from folks in the comments over this. We have a highly engaged, passionate community, and there were some strong feelings about the way things went.
We had issues with the hub page crashing all day. Honestly, we just didn’t expect this much traffic. We absolutely obliterated our conversion rate for the month, one of the team’s primary KPIs.
Postmortem
I always advise designers I work with not to get married to the things they make, and not to take negative feedback to heart. But the user feedback on this one was really hard not to take personally.
It bothered me so much that I pulled all our comments from the site and socials, and brought them into FigJam, where I sorted them into themes.
From there, I made a deck, and shared out the themes and findings with the rest of the company. It wasn’t fun. It felt like everyone was really excited about the event, and the results, and I was kind of a buzzkill. But, not unlike eating your vegetables, taking a hard look at your user feedback can be lame sometimes. It was really well received overall, and I’m glad we did it. It gave us a lot to learn from going into 10/10 for 2023.
The Good
Overall, the day was considered a huge success by leadership. We saw total sales reach nearly $900,000, and saw a 349% increase in shop sessions.
Unfortunately, we absolutely tanked our conversion rate for the month. We didn’t realize how many folks would get the watch in their cart, and then lose it when the first person checked out.
The Bad & The Ugly
We heard a lot of negative feedback from folks in the comments over this. We have a highly engaged, passionate community, and there were some strong feelings about the way things went.
We had issues with the hub page crashing all day. Honestly, we just didn’t expect this much traffic. We absolutely obliterated our conversion rate for the month, one of the team’s primary KPIs.
Postmortem
I always advise designers I work with not to get married to the things they make, and not to take negative feedback to heart. But the user feedback on this one was really hard not to take personally.
It bothered me so much that I pulled all our comments from the site and socials, and brought them into FigJam, where I sorted them into themes.
From there, I made a deck, and shared out the themes and findings with the rest of the company. It wasn’t fun. It felt like everyone was really excited about the event, and the results, and I was kind of a buzzkill. But, not unlike eating your vegetables, taking a hard look at your user feedback can be lame sometimes. It was really well received overall, and I’m glad we did it. It gave us a lot to learn from going into 10/10 for 2023.
Conclusion
This was probably the best example I’ve experience first-hand of design and engineering working together. I love working with Pat anyway, but this was especially fun because of the tight timeline, the space to create something so new, and the 1:1 time we got to collaborate together. Really excited to have more than a week to execute this in 2023, though.
This was probably the best example I’ve experience first-hand of design and engineering working together. I love working with Pat anyway, but this was especially fun because of the tight timeline, the space to create something so new, and the 1:1 time we got to collaborate together. Really excited to have more than a week to execute this in 2023, though.
This was probably the best example I’ve experience first-hand of design and engineering working together. I love working with Pat anyway, but this was especially fun because of the tight timeline, the space to create something so new, and the 1:1 time we got to collaborate together. Really excited to have more than a week to execute this in 2023, though.
