Dani Dirks
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Los Angeles, CA, United States
Toptal member since January 17, 2022
Dani has a decade of experience in product across UX design, software development, and product management. She has managed globally distributed teams and specializes in core user experiences and growth product strategy across SEO, user acquisition, and activation. She is data-driven and uses design thinking and continuous discovery methods to help companies define growth levers and build and optimize both digital product experiences and growth loops.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- A/B Testing
- Continuous Discovery
- Product Management
- Product Ownership
- Project Management
- User Interviews
- User Testing
- Web Analytics
Work Experience
Product Management Consultant
Self-Employed
- Initiated and led the creation of a membership pause feature, driving a 45% year-over-year reduction in summer churn for pediatric clients and their families.
- Managed over a dozen stakeholders while spearheading the transition of a complex scheduling system, saving $15,000 monthly in overhead.
- Implemented robust launch and risk management processes, achieving a <0.1% error rate during the migration of thousands of appointments, creating internal processes still utilized for on-time, bug-free releases.
- Launched products for new client segments, resulting in thousands of additional membership signups in the first six months.
Principle Product Manager for Growth
Cerebral
- Led the redesign and rebuild of our core marketing site, which has led to a 200% increase in CTR from LP to the signup page, a 50% increase in lead creation, and a 60% improvement in SEO and site speed scores.
- Led the release of over 10,000 programmatic local SEO pages with the goal of increasing our sub mix from SEO by 175%.
- Oversaw changes to how Cerebral launched and released A/B tests leading to a 50% increase in A/B tests run while decreasing time to statistical significance.
- Built a six-month SEO strategy based on competitive long-tail keyword analysis.
Staff Product Manager
Cerebral
- Worked with the executive team to build quarterly product roadmaps and prioritize initiatives based on business and patient impact.
- Launched over a dozen A/B tests resulting in multi-point increases in CVR and retention.
- Launched a new post-checkout insurance flow, increasing overall insurance conversion and decreasing conversion funnel drop-off, raising company revenue by over 2 million dollars weekly.
- Spearheaded new legal and compliance initiatives to maximize patient safety and legal compliance while minimizing the impact on conversion and activation.
Chief Product Officer
Hacker Paradise
- Oversaw community experience and managed on-the-ground operations for over 525 clients on over 25 international remote work retreats.
- Used 1:1 customer interviews, NPS scores, and feedback to develop pre-trip onboarding, orientation, and on-trip activities resulting in an overall increase in satisfaction, participation, and referrals.
- Oversaw customer feedback and the qualitative and quantitative analysis of current post-trip alumni engagement. Increased engagement and reactivation of alumni network by 20%.
- Conducted user interviews to validate new product hypotheses and facilitated remote and in-person design sprints to create and test prototypes.
- Launched successful alpha and beta tests of the MVP community application with 200 members of the community while managing all communication, analytics, and reporting.
- Created and published QA guidelines, code reviews, and continuous integration requirements for external development agencies and internal teams. Decreased first-time QA failures by 50% and second-time QA failures by 80%.
- Developed and managed the company roadmap and OKRs, refined feature ideas, and maintained existing features to drive business growth goals while tripling our trip offerings.
- Managed a fully remote cross-functional team across six time zones. Acted as a lead web designer and developer for the company rebrand, increasing site speed 2x, increasing uptime by 20%, decreasing the exit rate by 45%, and improving overall engagement 4x.
- Designed and implemented website templates, a sandbox environment, and agile project management systems and methodologies to decrease bottlenecks and increase overall company output by 150%. Reduced the release cycle from monthly to weekly.
- Redesigned the application funnel using growth experiments, A/B testing, user interviews, and qualitative metrics. Improved the application rate by 3x and decreased low-quality leads by 75%, leading to an overall 2.5x growth in first-time trip purchases.
Full-stack Software Developer
Build.com
- Optimized features across our eCommerce platform, including product page, recommendations, customer portal, learning center, learning center search functionality, new filters for categories, category page layouts, and checkout flow.
- Built internal tools and custom CMS. Decreased brand managers' time spent building campaigns by 3.5 hours per campaign. Increased conversion rates and onsite campaigns by an average of 45% reduced developer time on bug fixes.
- Acted as product owner and lead developer for the new category filters. Worked with customer service, data, and search teams to optimize category tags and rebuilt search API resulting in a 15% increase in sales from pages with new filters.
- Led the development of the new checkout flow, achieving a 22% decrease in checkout abandonment and a 30% increase in account creation during checkout.
Project History
Hacker Paradise Website
http://hackerparadise.orgLed the Hacker Paradise rebrand and website redesign, rebuild, and relaunch.
As head of technology and product, I led the redesign and re-platform of the Hacker Paradise website with five major goals in mind:
1. To increase the number of quality leads and trips paid
2. To decrease the number of low-quality leads
3. To decrease the number of roadblocks to releasing new trips and marketing pages
4. To decrease page load times
5. To increase the overall uptime
I relaunched the website using WordPress and Elementor and used Zapier for systems integrations with Zoho CRM. I also added a staging site and built templates that any employee could use. I also implemented a two-week sprint and QA process for anything website-related.
We increased site speed 2x, increased uptime by 20%, decreased exit rate by 45%, and increased overall engagement 4x. Our redesigned application funnel improved application rate 3x, decreased low-quality leads by 75%, reduced no-show interviews by 65%, and led to an overall 2.5x growth in first-time trip purchases.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design
Loyola Marymount University - Los Angeles
Bachelor's Degree in Economics
Loyola Marymount University - Los Angeles
Certifications
Advanced Growth Strategy
Reforge
Design Sprint Facilitator
AJ & Smart
Full Stack Software Developer
Dev Bootcamp Chicago
Skills
Tools
Slack, Google Docs, Jira, GitHub, Figma, Google Analytics, Asana, Google Optimize, Usertesting.com, Zapier, Looker, Illustrator CC, Confluence
Paradigms
Design Thinking, HIPAA Compliance, Agile Project Management, Key Performance Metrics, Agile Product Management, User Testing, Human-centered Design (HCD), Test-driven Development (TDD)
Platforms
Monday.com, Zoho CRM, Google Analytics 4
Industry Expertise
Healthcare
Other
WordPress, Product Management, Feature Backlog Prioritization, User Interviews, Product Ownership, A/B Testing, Web Analytics, QA Testing, Product Discovery, User Needs, User Research, User Experience (UX), Growth, Funnel Optimization, Landing Page Optimization, Technical Product Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Performance Analysis, Mobile Applications, User Requirements, Mobile User Acquisition, Medical Software, Mobile Apps, Mobile Development, MVP Design, Telehealth, Acceptance Criteria, Backlog Management, Product Owner, Continuous Discovery, Heap, Google Sheets, Backlog Grooming, Front-end Development, Project Management, Sprint Planning, Analytics, Roadmaps, Product Roadmaps, Semrush, Google Search Console, Customer Acquisition, Local SEO, Google SEO, Client Portals, eCommerce, Workflow, Automation, Software Development, Subscriptions, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Business Analysis, Front-end Design, Beta Testing, AngularJS, Node.js, Back-end Development, Web Design, Product Design, Conversion, Brand Activation, Insurance Product Manager, User Onboarding, Impact Assessment, Feature Prioritization, Single Sign-on (SSO), Economics, Computer Graphics, Graphic Design, Photoshop CC, UX Design, Miro, Datadog, SEO Tools, User Stories, User Validation Testing, Conversion Rate, Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Growth Model, Airtable, Data Pipelines, Product Growth, Full-stack Development, Software Engineering, Ruby on Rails (RoR), React, Strategy, Product Strategy, Workshop Facilitation, Facilitation, Design Sprints
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