
Ning Xu
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Toptal member since July 3, 2020
Ning is a seasoned product manager with ten years of experience in fintech and eCommerce. At Adidas, she achieved a conversion rate uplift, exceeding all expectations, and increased site speed by 70%. With a background in UX and strategy, Ning has managed products in startups seeking market fit, small businesses growing their value proposition, and multinational corporations iterating optimization, all by leveraging data insights. Today, she helps her clients with strategy, growth, and scaling.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Product Management
- Fintech
- Mobile Apps
- Product Research
- Product Roadmaps
- Product Strategy
- User Research
- eCommerce
Work Experience
Freelance Product Consultant
Self-Employed
- Advised several startups on growth and scaling, ranging from seed to Series B.
- Focused mostly on consumer products, marketplace, and platform.
- Supported founders and senior executives with practical tactics to help transition when redefining the strategy.
Freelance Product Manager
Adidas
- Improved Adidas's checkout conversion rate through UX optimization, front-end re-platforming, and integrating with new back-end systems, such as shipping and payments.
- Brought a double-digit conversion rate, uplift exceeding expectations, and increased site speed by 70%.
- Defined the MVP and roadmap and prioritized the go-to-market timelines.
- Managed market stakeholders in Europe, the Americas, and the CIS region.
- Led two remote engineering teams ensuring timely delivery, feedback loops, and iterations.
Product Manager
BUX
- Managed the user-facing mobile apps (iOS and Android), back-end infrastructure, and back-office web.
- Reached two million users across nine European countries within two years.
- Improved metrics across activation (user onboarding), conversion (non-paid to the paid user, incl. KYC process), and retention.
- Scaled the infrastructure and technology stack enabling the company's future growth.
- Led two teams (10-15 designers and engineers, including remote members), working with OKRs and using Scrum to deliver bi-week releases.
- Initiated and led product owner chapter, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.
Product Manager
Squla
- Increased user engagement by creating new e-learning features and iterating existing ones on the web, mobile, and tablet apps.
- Improved customer satisfaction, retention, and subscription renewal rate.
- Revamped the legacy system—Flash to HTML5, PHP to Python, and Native apps to Unity—to create a seamless cross-device experience.
Product Manager
Tweakers
- Developed two main revenue streams: advertising and eCommerce price comparison services.
- Turned red figures into a double-digit revenue growth with a new value proposition.
- Managed online content, advertising, and search. Improved KPIs related to page views and click-through conversion rates.
- Led UX process, research, analysis, concept generating, prototyping, and evaluating.
User Researcher
Booking.com
- Planned and executed research on both sides of Booking.com's online marketplace, the customer-facing websites and mobile apps (B2C), and the client portal (B2B).
- Improved the user and client experience, conversion, and sales by using various strategic methods and validated potential solutions via A/B and multivariate tests.
- Shared research-based findings and actionable insights with the leadership team, which led to several new product development initiatives, bringing multiple million euro annual revenue growths.
- Negotiated with software vendors to optimize the research process and maximize results.
Project History
Adidas.com Front-end Migration
Led the front-end migration for multiple adidas.com markets achieving a conversion rate uplift, which exceeded expectations.
I defined the MVP per market through stakeholder collaboration and market research and prioritized the go-to-market timelines based on the potential revenue uplift opportunities. Together with the migration teams, we delivered a massive site speed improvement and conversion rate uplift, which exceeded the expectations.
BUX Mobile Trading App with Two Million Users
https://getbux.com/Product owner for the startup's user-facing product and infrastructure during high-growth phase, scaling for both business and technology.
As product owner, I focused on activation (user onboarding), conversion (non-paid to paid user, including the KYC process), and retention, which improved metrics across all funnels. I defined the startup's product roadmaps and prioritized initiatives to achieve user and revenue growth and enhance technical scalability.
Tweakers' New Value Proposition
Turned red figures into double digit revenue growth.
As the product manager, I worked extensively with the leadership team on the new strategy and successfully executed it through various initiatives, such as, the introduction of new Tweakers visual branding reaching a wider audience group, redesign of expert product reviews' layout providing digestible and comprehensive insights for consumers, and various improvements in listings and filters of Tweakers' price watch through user research insights. We turned red figures into multiple years of double-digit revenue growth.
Education
Master's Degree in Human Computer Interaction
University of Twente - Enschede, The Netherlands
Bachelor's Degree in Product Design
Zhejiang University - Hangzhou, China
Exchange Program in Product Design
Hong Kong Polytechnic University - Hong Kong
Skills
Tools
Jira, Slack, Zoom, Confluence
Paradigms
Agile, Agile Product Management, Scrum, Kanban, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Other
Product Management, Product Ownership, UX Research, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Value Proposition, Product-market Fit, Mobile, Web, User Experience (UX), Product Research, User Research, Business Analysis, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Product Strategy, Product Roadmaps, Go-to-market Plans, Product Discovery, Product Marketing, Mobile Apps, Fintech, eCommerce, Data Analysis, Data Visualization, SQL, Go-to-market Strategy, Automation, Miro, Notion
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