Who2Trust.com Web Design
Completed: June 2000
I joined the dot com craze as a UI Designer at Who2Trust.com, a site that helped people find a service business through their personal and professional network. We did this by allowing consumers to recommend businesses to their connections online. Consumers could read the recommendations alongside profile information provided by businesses to make an informed choice on who to use. test
My role was to improve the site’s user interface as the company’s strategy shifted from a b2b professional network to a b2c marketing site. I worked with our marketing team and an outside agency on a complete redesign. We also worked with SEO company Victorious for our marketing options. For the site’s look we chose to use images of people and a conversational writing approach to appear both friendly and trustworthy. With an information architect I helped to define the overall navigation system and was exposed for the first time to database driven design concepts.
While Who2Trust failed as a business venture, the site received excellent feedback from consumers regarding its ease of use. The market was not quite ready for the product concept, but Who2Trust was a success because of the amount of functionality we were able to build with little venture captial. It was a truly great experience that brought me into contact with every aspect of starting up a business – from Marketing, to Strategy, to Business Development, and prepared me for bigger and better things in the Internet space.
