Growing Design Through Community

Creative Direction
Visual and UX/UI design
Data driven interaction design
Web Development

PODIUM Nutrition

PODIUM Nutrition, a fully transparent supplements company with roots in the CrossFit community, is poised for rapid growth. PODIUM is still a ‘baby’ company by industry standards but is beloved by CrossFit enthusiasts and has a cult following among athletes.

When I joined, I recognized the challenges of managing a growing catalog, expanding retail partners, and reaching a broader audience. Although our die-hard customers are still converting, scaling requires building a new design and coding language and setting up processes for design and development that weren’t in place before. We used the firm brand ethos and design preferences as a solid foundation to create the design + build processes, inclusive branding conceptualization, optimized customer journey, social, ads, and email marketing.

Role

Director of Digitial Design & Ecomm Channel Lead

Year

2023 - Present

Building a Unified Brand Experience.

The redesign of PODIUM focuses on unifying and elevating the brand’s digital presence as it expands beyond CrossFit. With a growing product line and wider audience, creating a cohesive experience for loyal and new customers is essential. The aim is to maintain the PODIUM ethos while enhancing inclusivity, improving site performance, and streamlining interactions for sustained growth.

The pillars of PODIUM’s design concepts include:

• Retro meets Elevated

• Real Athletes, Real Performances

• Flavor is King

• Concise messaging with powerful imagery

• #builtfromwithin TO #likeachamp

The biggest challenge in rebranding was evolving without losing the PODIUM ethos. We had to stay true to the brand while making imagery and messaging more inclusive, optimizing performance, and simplifying user flow to grow the audience while retaining loyal customers.

I established a UI library to ensure consistency across all platforms, including the DTC site, B2B, retail, wholesale, event assets, ads, SMS, and emails.

Understanding the Opportunity

Why?

To align with current consumer behavior and expand our base, we enhance inclusivity and streamline the user experience for a broader audience. This includes modernizing our approach for B2B and international markets, improving user interactions, and ensuring our digital presence resonates with diverse needs while maintaining brand authenticity.

Who?

Our loyal client base, new customers who like to order online, and even those customers who have only seen the brand at a retail partner or wholesale location. It also stood as a solid value proposition for those completely new to the brand as we expanded into international markets.

Creating a Streamlined User Journey

It starts with a simple idea: let’s make this easier for our customers. Driven by this goal, I delved into extensive research to craft an intuitive and streamlined user journey. The challenge was to solve one problem without creating another. While PODIUM was already converting well, thanks to a strong CrossFit Athlete Roster and ambassador-driven sales, making the site more inclusive for a broader audience meant enhancing intuitiveness without compromising conversion.

Priority Goals:

Simplify site navigation
Optimize cart flow
Allow all products to shine
Add interactive features for stronger user engagement

Although an overhaul was necessary, we took a component-first approach to the redesign to avoid disrupting our loyal customers. This strategy preserved familiar website sections while allowing for catalog growth and audience expansion.