Ning Xu, Product Manager in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Ning is available for hire
Hire Ning

Ning Xu

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Toptal member since July 3, 2020

Bio

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

Adidas.com Front-end Migration
Led the front-end migration for multiple adidas.com markets achieving a conversion rate uplift, which exceeded expectations.
BUX Mobile Trading App with Two Million Users
Product owner for the startup's user-facing product and infrastructure during high-growth phase, scaling for both business and technology.
Tweakers' New Value Proposition
Turned red figures into double digit revenue growth.

Expertise

  • Agile Product Management
  • Fintech
  • Mobile Apps
  • Product Research
  • Product Roadmaps
  • Product Strategy
  • User Research
  • eCommerce

Work Experience

Freelance Product Consultant

2018 - PRESENT
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

2019 - 2019
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

2016 - 2019
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

2016 - 2016
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

2014 - 2015
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

2012 - 2013
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.

Adidas.com was in the middle of a front-end migration process for multiple local eCommerce markets in Europe, the Americas, and CIS. The migration involved a complete visual redesign and integration with various new back-end systems, such as shipping and payments.
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.

BUX is a startup making trading on the financial markets accessible for everybody, regardless of financial means or previous experience. I was responsible for user-facing mobile apps (iOS and Android), back-end infrastructure, and back-office (web) during the two years of a high growth phase, where we reached two million monthly active users across nine European countries.
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.

Tweakers is the biggest technology website in the Netherlands and Belgium. It features news and information about hardware, software, and the Internet, produced by its in-house tech expert editors, as well as by its community, a group of more than half a million technology enthusiasts. For more than 20 years, Tweakers focused only on the target group of technology enthusiasts. As technology and the Internet became more mainstream, we saw the opportunities to better monetize the Tweakers' expertise with a new value proposition; with new content and a product strategy focusing on providing useful knowledge for mainstream consumers to choose the right technology products and shop at the best prices.
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

2009 - 2011

Master's Degree in Human Computer Interaction

University of Twente - Enschede, The Netherlands

2005 - 2009

Bachelor's Degree in Product Design

Zhejiang University - Hangzhou, China

2007 - 2007

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

Collaboration That Works

How to Work with Toptal

Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.

1

Share your needs

Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2

Choose your talent

Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3

Start your risk-free talent trial

Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.

Top talent is in high demand.

Start hiring