Role summary
Role: VP Product and Head of Development
Created and maintained the company’s product strategy, roadmap, and backlog of work through all project lifecycles. Led go-to-market strategy for new products. Designed the majority of features and wrote user stories for all digital products. Directly managed the development team and product delivery, including nine developers, product owners and designers. Created a recurring schedule for user feedback of all new features and major release versions.
While leading Product and Development at huggg, I faced and conquered a number of challenges:
How do I create the viral effect in an app with strong social elements?
How will I adapt product procedures when we grow too big for sticky notes and hallway chats?
How can I scale a team and ensure that we retain communication and culture?
How should we plan ahead to scale an app for a massive peak in traffic overnight?
How can I keep a distributed team in the loop on upcoming changes to the product and company, at all times?
Highlights
App purchases increased by over 300% in six months
One of Forbes “Startups to Watch”
Built and launched B2B digital product resulting in a 440% increase in sales
Ranked #2 in the iMessage app store Food & Drink category
About huggg
huggg allows users to send real-life treats in an instant via the messaging platforms where they're already communicating. Users can surprise friends and colleagues with coffee, cake, cinema tickets and more. During my time there, the consumer mobile app was a strong focus, alongside a full B2B suite of offerings. I joined the company as the second employee after its founders, growing it to over 20 team members in 18 months, nine of which were on the Product Development team.
Original prototype - Yikes!
Shoppable, user-friendly improvements.
The main mobile app
★★★★☆ 4.6 on the Google Play store
★★★★★ 4.9 on the Apple App Store
When I joined the company in April 2018, the prototype mobile app (a monolithic app built in Angular & Cordova) was being turned over from the external development company. My first priority was to assess the current app, review all previously gathered user feedback, become familiar with the business goals, and draft an initial roadmap. This work included a full rebrand.
The app’s current version was not user-friendly and the shopping flow greatly limited discoverability of products. Since this was an entirely new digital concept, trust was vital, and brand new users were not seeing the info they needed to make purchases confidently.
I created and maintained a strong product strategy, roadmap, and backlog of work through all project lifecycles, and designed the majority of features, including writing user stories for all digital products. To help create an easy-to-follow procedure, I led creation of a recurring schedule for user feedback of all new features and major release versions.
Adding a web redemption app
Codename: Sangria. In mid-2019, our team released a web platform for redemption, which was originally intended for demoing the product at conferences and events. To increase rate of redemption, one of our core KPIs, we soon opened an MVP of this functionality up to the public. This allowed recipients to redeem their hugggs without downloading the app. Full redemption functionality for multiple methods was built out, which accounted for 20% of redemptions within the first month from launch. User feedback was gathered over the following months which led further improvements and functionality, resulting in an additional increase in usage to stash and redeem hugggs.
Rebuilding our iMessage app
Codename: Green Fairy. When I joined the company, there was already an iMessage app, built in Swift. I led the team while examining the future of the product as a whitelabeled asset for brand customers, at which point we made the decision to rebuild the app in ObjC. This allowed us to integrate months of user feedback without battling legacy code and bugs, and helped us pivot the product as an add-on for our customer’s existing brand apps, regardless of what technology or language they used. The new version launched in June 2019 allowed for purchases exclusively through Apple Pay, and as of August 2019 was in the approvals process for a featured in the Apple App Store.
Releasing a new API product
Codename: Old Fashioned. Our third-party API was an important part of the huggg ecosystem. For the months leading up to its release, I worked with stakeholders and partners to help them create the best user experience within their application, all the way through the development and launch process. Partners were able to create fully customised flows within their apps, including listing products, displaying brand information, sending hugggs between customers and users, and more. This was popular with employee rewards programs, customer service platforms, etc.
I 🖤 low-code
I’m a big believer in doing things that don’t scale, to prove out ideas. Using low-code methods, I personally developed and launched multiple test products, including the company’s first B2B sales platform, resulting in a 440% increase in sales.
Codename: Highball. When the decision was made to pivot toward B2B sales, we didn’t have the development resource to do this quickly. I took this on as a solo project. My goal was to create an MVP of a B2B solution that could be managed by the wider, non-development team while they determined the best business model to follow. I worked with the Business Partnerships team to create a solution that used Wordpress, Zapier and Typeform which allowed business customers to make bulk purchases of hugggs for customer and employee incentive programs. Users were guided through an account signup and purchase process utilising a float account that was managed by the Business Partnerships team via Google Sheets. The app was planned, developed, and launched in just 2 weeks and the first week of sales made it our most profitable digital asset, with a 440% increase in sales.
Codename: Tom Collins. During my second solo low-code project, I researched, designed, and built an automated onboarding system for new merchants, allowing the company to begin advertising for new partners on a national scale. The system was planned alongside the Sales team to accept three types of merchant nomination and handle all comms to get a new location signed up and live on the app. Combining Typeform and Zapier, I built an automated-signup process for merchants across the UK who wanted to start accepting hugggs.
“Do things that don’t scale.”
Other apps
Want to know more? Ask me about any of these other “codenamed” projects!
Manhattan: Our Slack app for peer-to-peer sales of hugggs and employee rewards on the chat platform.
Angel Face: An “iframeable” purchase flow for partner websites, allowing their visitors to send their products as hugggs directly.
Cosmo: Our internal content management system and tooling.
The team
From the very start, it was important to me that our development team be built out in a way that would empower everyone to do their best work, to feel secure and fulfilled, and to have pride in what we were setting out to accomplish. They’re not “resources”, they’re humans!
Inclusion is something I personally feel very strongly about, and I wanted the team to reflect that in the structure that we offered, as well as the flexibility. Here are just some of the ways that we made that happen:
Weekly Product Development team meetings with professional and personal updates
Clear division of responsibility, including org charts and project owners, as well as sub-team leads
Monthly retrospectives with action items
Fortnightly Agile sprint planning sessions
Clear procedures including design system, prioritisation framework, release cycles & Definition of Done
Personal development budget for courses, conferences, etc.
10% time to spend on personal development and learning new technologies
Personal User Manuals to help management understand each individual’s needs
Monthly 1-to-1s to discuss personal goals, and requests for a more productive environment
Flexible working and scheduling
“Ashley has this amazing ability to make multi-tasking and managing a diverse team of people look easy. She never ceased to amaze me with her people skills and ability to extract the best out of a team. She brought unique ideas and had a vision for the product that contributed massively to the company’s successes.”
What users had to say
“Huggg like there's no tomorrow! The app is simple and easy to use, and it's lovely to support a growing and friendly company.”
“I love this app! It's super easy to set up.”
“Such a simple concept, but so well executed and actually puts smiles on people's faces.”
“The app is incredibly well done.”
“This is by far the best app out there for sharing and giving.”
“I've been waiting for an app just like this for years. So convenient.”
“Huggg is by far one of my favourite apps.”
"The most wonderful app out there!"
"Fucking brilliant"
"I used your incredible app over the weekend, was telling all my family about it and they've also downloaded. I absolutely love it!"
"Thank you for existing!"
"I love the concept. I'm hooked!"
“This is officially the most magical app. The world needs more businesses like you!”
“What a brilliant app and a wholesome idea. Brimming with potential!”