I recently launched Douglas Digital to offer my services as a Digital Product Manager to senior business leaders who are committed to going digital. If that's you, you might appreciate a little support and reassurance from an experienced digital practitioner to translate technical jargon, navigate your options and help you maximise your business's digital potential.
I've over 25 years of experience in Design & Marketing and more than 19 years developing successful "digital customer journey" experiences. That's everything from a customer clicking on an ad or search result, to the website they land on. From the e-commerce site that they buy from, to the digital customer service that automatically answers their questions and gets things done.
I've held senior digital leadership roles in start-ups, SME's and multinational corporations. I hold a Leadership and Management post-grad from University College Cork (UCC) and a Design degree from Ulster University (UU). Earlier in my career, I held various digital roles like:
- Digital Market Analyst
- Graphic/Web Designer
- Google Ads and Analytics Specialist
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Specialist
- Technical Writer (User stories or functional requirements)
- Mobile and Web App User Experience Designer and Writer (UX/UI)
- Web Application Developer (PHP, HTML, CSS & JS)
- Functional and User Acceptance Tester (UAT)
- Promotional Campaign Copywriter for Digital Assets
- Digital infrastructure and services procurement coordinator
These experiences help me to onboard, support and build highly effective relationships with "build teams" as a Digital Project Manager.
More recently as a strategist, I've coordinated cross-functional business stakeholders like Product development, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Operations, IT governance, Legal, Risk and Compliance teams too. Often, acting as an intermediary between them and the build teams to develop and deliver "world-class" effective digital strategies on time and within budget.
I am passionate about the end-to-end digital customer journey experience, how it can help to differentiate and add value to a business. Not only are great digital experiences due to how they look and feel, they're also about what they enable customers to do and how convenient and enjoyable it is to do it. In my humble opinion, digital customer experience is the key defining factor between success and failure in our new digital world. I intend to be your customer experience champion in every project I manage for you.
Initially, as I grow Douglas Digital, where key skillsets are not already available in your organisation, I will be offering to provide some of the services outlined in this website with support from skilled digital practitioners I've previously worked with, those whom I can trust to deliver for you.
Garrett Douglas
Founder, BA HDip
Managed a website for a large global corporate to a point where it owns 21% Global SEO (free traffic) market share, leaving its nearest global competitor on 4%... it now owns more market share than all six key competitors combined.
45% of B2C sales referred by free traffic.
All digital campaigns combined captured, qualified and referred 90% of all B2C leads.
Drove +1mn people per year to the website and achieved a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) that aligned with profitable growth targets .
*****
Successfully introduced an "Independent Five Star rating" service to a very conservative, risk-averse financial services company. It now provides buyers with a rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars from existing customers, "social proof" of their quality of service. This very influential service delivered a significant boost in "straight-through" online sales and lowered their cost per acquisition.
*****
Won a "Spider" award for eBooker's PLC Irish website.
*****
Successfully managed development of a 1,300 page multi-lingual, multi-product and multi-regional global website designed to generate B2C + B2B leads and support existing customers. It included an innovative "easy find" navigation system to offset its large size. We also replaced their mature, high authority domain (of 19 years) with a new one that had no SEO authority, without losing any free traffic. Delivered on-time and on-budget with a small team of specialists.
*****
Successfully managed the development of an Attribution dashboard providing a global financial services company with a combined online and offline view of multi-lingual, global digital marketing channels and their value in terms of the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) that each delivers in real-time.
Strategist and marketing lead for a multi-lingual bespoke B2C e-commerce solution that converts 50% of all B2C sales "straight-through" online (independent of sales staff) for a top 50 ranked Global Fortune 500 company.
*****
Developed 15 localised versions of a pan-European hotel and flight booking engine for large international online travel business.
*****
Managed the end-to-end development of an innovative B2B quotation system for a global insurance company, first in its market to provide an indicative quote for group business designed to increase volumes of better qualified, easier to convert leads.
*****
Strategist and marketing lead for the development of a convenient global call back request system which provides a sales appointment booking service (for a sales team that works 9-5 pm, Mon-Fri GMT) to a global audience in their local date and time-zone. This is their top sales referral channel due to its ability to qualify B2C leads and provide free calls.
*****
Strategist and marketing lead for a sales chatbot (AI) and live-chat service. The chatbot was programmed to qualify potential leads before passing them to a live-chat with a sales team member. All managed to optimise conversions.
Strategist and user experience lead to an international mobile app development. This project achieved 75% customer adoption of its key digital services delivering target cost savings while providing a new USP for their global sales team. This app also satisfied local regulators around the globe.
With over 150,000 registered users it has achieved a combined 90% customer satisfaction rating in the Apple and Android app stores. Won a "best in group" award too.
*****
Strategist and user experience lead for the development of multiple web and mobile apps. This includes:
A Health & Fitness app
BMI Calculator
Medical Symptom Checker
A Global Health Practitioner Finder
Medical case management request service
All designed to support and deliver a new value proposition while adhering to regulatory compliance.
*****
Strategist and marketing lead for a bespoke B2B online portal development enabling business partners and group clients to securely set up and manage contracts, run reports and engage with other convenient "self-services".
*****
All developments outlined here include the setup of analytics dashboards that map and visualise aggregate "customer journeys".
These maps provide clear evidence of the paths well-travelled and those that are not in terms of each key feature's levels of customer engagement. This provides key insights for additional investment to develop improvements that achieve additional cost savings.