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4 min read

Growing Inquiries at Zola

Summary

Background and Role

Zola's long term mission is to become the most innovative and trusted company for the entire couple's journey. Having already serviced millions of couples and expanded the business from a wedding registry startup to a full suite of wedding products, Zola is well-positioned to further grow and encompass the largest wedding bucket spend: wedding vendors.

As Senior Director of Product Design on the Vendor Marketplace team, I was “player-coach” shaping strategy, generating designs, and managing 4 direct reports and stakeholder relationships with our CDO/Co-Founder and SVP/GM. I also co-led the Product Design team to evolve culture, design operations, and design system.

Scope and Goal

The scope of work was expansive, with touch points on nearly every screen of our desktop and mobile experiences. The design process was led by myself and a Lead Product Manager, with collaboration from a number of other designers, PMs, and members from 7 more departments. From mid-2022 to early-2023, we launched a few big features, dozens of experiments, and countless optimizations.

We aimed to dramatically increase inquiries in total volume and per couple. A couple inquiry is when an engaged couple reaches out to a wedding vendor on Zola's two-sided marketplace. From digging into the data and understanding couples' needs and behaviors, we knew that high quality inquiry volume was the lifeblood of Zola's marketplace, not just as a key driver for revenue, but also for the satisfaction of both couples and vendors.

Impact

We boosted monthly metrics significantly:
• Sent inquiries grew by 2.2x
• Connected inquiries grew by 3.5x

Another notable outcome: Gross Sales grew by 4.3x

Pulling early funnel couples into the ecosystem

There was a large opportunity to engage with and acquire couples during the inspiration phase of their wedding journey. By capturing data early on, like wedding location, date, and budget, we were able to serve them a more personalized experience and transition them to relevant products within Zola.

We connected couples and vendors with two integrated products: Real Weddings for inspiration and Marketplace for contact and communication.

vendor marketplace map
real weddings and marketplacee products
real weddings and marketplacee products

Real Weddings (vendor-linked inspiration)

We offered couples a visual search experience (think “actionable Pinterest”) that linked vendors from the actual wedding. It also helped inspire their wedding vision, urging them to (1) favorite and sign up and (2) add their initial preferences, which boosted their readiness to connect with vendors.
View Real Weddings 

Real Weddings

Make the First Move (let vendors reach out too)

User feedback and quantitative data revealed serious marketplace issues. Couples faced difficulty finding vendors, with 40% of couple inquiries unanswered. Vendors struggled with low incoming inquiries and lacked options to enhance their pipeline.

To solve this issue, we built a feature that allows vendors to reach out to couples who met at least one of the following criteria. The couple had to (1) favorite a vendor, (2) complete a “mini-quiz” and be qualified as relevant, or (3) inquire with a vendor in the same category and location. We made couples and vendors happy and 2x our connected inquiry rate.

make the first move
Primary reference
Primary reference
Layout directions
Layout directions
Post-launch brainstorm
Post-launch brainstorm

Vendor Shuffle (explore with a button)

We crafted a fun feature that assembled a team of vendors from 8 of Zola's supported categories within a designated location. This feature simplified navigation to vendor listing pages and supported budget education. Plus, it yielded a +3.89% inquiry CVR and was rolled out to 100% of traffic (pre-auth and post-auth).

Supercharging inquiries

Inquiring couples need to submit more data on Zola compared to some competitor sites, because Zola’s business model is primarily based on vetting lead quality for vendors. Other marketplaces rely on an ad-based model, which does not require as much couple data but may result in low-quality “spammy” leads.

We made inquiring easier for couples by (1) minimizing required information as much as possible using category-specific insights and (2) suggesting relevant vendors to couples post-inquiry, so they could re-use the same information to reach out in bulk.

multiple inquiries

Takeaways

Because every online marketplace is unique, creating a new one is not a simple copy-paste job, and getting its flywheel spinning is a true feat. This marketplace involved once-in-a-lifetime-sized budgets, emotionally invested couples on one side, 10 nuanced categories of vendors on the other, a large internal team, plenty of ambiguity, and a constant sense of urgency to ship experiments and deliver results.

Previous experiences prepared me for these challenges, thriving in high-pressure environments with an iterative approach towards innovation. User-centric and KPI-driven solutions were second nature.

I grew, managing diverse perspectives and balancing long-term goals with immediate priorities. Fostering healthy relationships between departments including Business, Legal, and Tech was rewarding, and proactively partnering with Copy helped our designs to speak to and build trust with couples and vendors. In future efforts, I aim to clearly align on assumptions while driving toward faster, bolder decisions.

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Vendor Marketplace Team - NYC 2023

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