Carlos A. Velasquez-Auza
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Houston, United States
Toptal member since June 22, 2023
Carlos is a digital marketer turned product designer who understands the importance of impact-driven design and tracking metrics. This framework helped him achieve a 9% increase in average order value by researching, testing, and implementing an "Add to cart alternative" feature and a 10% signup increase by designing a "Favorites" experience. Carlos enjoys turning complex challenges into lucrative results for the business and intuitive experiences for the users.
Portfolio
Add to Cart Feature for Academy
Alchemy Design System
Thumbtack Business Case
SyscoFoodie Project
Remi AI
Work Experience
Senior Product Designer
Covenant Eyes
- Designed an app feature that increased retention by 30% and improved the understanding of the service's value.
- Designed and developed the company's design system, accelerating development and alignment with development and design.
- Revamped the in-app purchasing flow to minimize confusion, prevent revenue losses, and stay consistent on a 2-app ecosystem.
Product Designer
Academy Sports + Outdoors
- Led a strategic vision, from concept to launch, to improve signups by 10% by designing an intuitive "Add to favorites" experience in web and app designs.
- Collaborated with product managers and engineers to prioritize, brainstorm, and deliver a user survey widget, saving development time by 50% and enhancing understanding of user pain points.
- Immersed in qualitative and quantitative data to identify and solve high-priority conversion blockers, increasing conversion rate by 12.5%.
- Conducted and synthesized user research, which resulted in designing a "Wayfinder" feature for Academy's mobile app that improves the digital customer experience and increases app downloads by 5%.
- Built consensus on design guidelines through Academy's design system, ensuring design best practices and consistency across teams and strategies. This increased the team's efficiency by 30% and reduced code redundancy by 10%.
- Contributed to the site's strategy, which resulted in a 9% increase in AOV, by researching, prototyping, testing, and implementing an "Add to cart" functionality in product listing pages.
Owner
CAVA Holdings
- Founded and operated a local irrigation business that generated $250,000 in annual revenue in 2022 through lead nurturing and negotiation.
- Established an eCommerce soccer brand that generated over $10,000 in the first 12 months through creative omnichannel marketing campaigns such as email, social media, influencer marketing, SEO, and paid ads.
- Designed and developed a prototype for an AI-powered restaurant marketing technology, Remi AI, which creates social media copy from a restaurant's menu to enable restaurants to focus on what they are passionate about.
- Developed and designed a gratitude journal app named Thankful, a task management-based app turned into a grateful journal.
UX Designer
SYSCO
- Increased customer through traffic five times by implementing the "Add to basket" feature on recipes pages.
- Conducted multivariate solutions and partnered with the engineering team to roll out new website features, delivering easy-to-follow wireframes, workflows, and prototypes that increased goal conversion by 70%.
- Lowered the customer acquisition cost by 15% by redesigning the "Become a customer" signup flow and optimizing CTA placements throughout the site.
- Designed marketing campaign landing pages, maintaining current styles, trends, and web navigation patterns to drive promotion signups, hiring rates, and conversion.
- Audited pages with Google Analytics, identifying optimization opportunities for marketing sites and campaign landing pages.
Marketing Consultant
SYSCO
- Worked independently to increase customer loyalty and retention by providing customers with menu analysis and design, web design, and social media best practices.
- Engineered and designed menus for customers, which resulted in a 30% profit increase for some restaurants.
- Drove cross-functional and collaborative efforts to implement a customer-centric social media consulting pilot program for customers, resulting in a further understanding of customers' pain points.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Marketing
University of St. Thomas - Houston, Texas, USA
Certifications
Certification of Interface Design
Shift Nudge
Webflow Certification
Flux Academy
Certified Web Professional - E-Commerce Specialist (CWP)
Baymard Institute
Quantum Metric Certification
Quantum Metric University
Certificate Program in UX/UI Mobile Design
Skills
Tools
Canva, Google Analytics, Jira, Camtasia, Bubble, Adobe Experience Design (XD), Adobe Analytics, InDesign CC, Excel 2016, Confluence
Platforms
Informizely, Figma, Mobile, UserZoom, Webflow, WordPress, iOS
Industry Expertise
Health & Wellness, Professional Services, Android UX Design
Other
User Research, Competitive Analysis, Product Design, Mobile UI Design, Mobile App Design, MVP Design, Marketing Design, Email Template Design, Digital Marketing Strategy, Bookkeeping, Sales Funnel, Negotiation, Business Ownership, Mobile UX Design, UX Wireframes, Low-fidelity Prototypes, UX Design, UI Design, Wireframing, Prototyping, Mobile Design, Heuristic Analysis, Apps, Booking Systems, Marketplaces, Digital Marketing, Small Business, Web Marketing, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Google SEO, Public Speaking, Business Analysis, Excel 365, OneSignal, Adalo, Squarespace, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), User Interviews, Design Thinking, User Behavior, Web Analytics, eCommerce, User Flows, UX Wireflows, User Journeys, Responsive UI, Design Systems, Interaction Design (IxD), Mobile UI, Web Design, Web App UX, Interface Design, App UI, Web Development
Experience
- Business Ownership - 6 years
- Figma - 5 years
- User Research - 4 years
- Competitive Analysis - 4 years
- Mobile UI Design - 4 years
- User Interface (UI) - 4 years
- User Experience (UX) - 4 years
- Webflow - 3 years
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