Case Study 3: Winc — Self-Serve Landing Page CMS
Overview
Company: Winc (formerly ClubW)
Role: Frontend Developer
Duration: June 2015 – October 2017
Industry: E-commerce / Wine Subscription
The Challenge
Winc's marketing team was severely bottlenecked by engineering. Every campaign landing page required developer intervention—from asset collection to deployment. The team could only ship 3-4 pages per week, meaning a 40-page campaign would take 10+ weeks. Meanwhile, the company was undergoing a complete rebrand from ClubW to Winc.
Key Problems:
- Marketing limited to 3-4 landing pages per week
- 40 pages would take 10+ weeks to deploy
- Every page required engineering time
- Simultaneous rebrand requiring seamless transition
- High customer acquisition cost ($47 CAC, break-even at month 3)
- Legacy AngularJS codebase needed modernization
My Approach
First: Pattern Recognition
I started this as a side project during downtime, recognizing the recurring bottleneck. My manager had the idea but lacked technical skills to execute.
Second: CMS Architecture
- Designed self-serve system using Angular 2 (cutting-edge at the time)
- Built form-based interface with input validations
- Implemented AWS S3 integration for asset uploads
- Created database storage for page configurations
- Developed backend service generating static HTML for SEO
Third: Template System
- Created reusable templates with variable asset/content injection
- Built one-off exception capability for custom campaigns
- Enabled immediate deployment without engineering review
Fourth: Team Enablement
- Trained 4 marketing team members on CMS usage
- Created documentation and best practices
- Migrated existing landing pages within 2 weeks
Fifth: Company Rebrand
- Recruited by CEO personally for rebrand project
- Restyled entire website to new Winc branding
- Ensured seamless user transition with zero friction
- Sunset old ClubW application
Sixth: Conversion Optimization
- Joined cross-functional conversion team (designer, QA, PM, developer, data analyst)
- Analyzed member journey funnels
- Identified and fixed abandonment points
- Implemented UX improvements with A/B testing
The Results
| Metric | Before | After | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landing Pages per Month | 12 | 200+ in 2 months | 1,600% increase |
| Pages per Week | 3-4 | 8-12 average | 3x velocity |
| Engineering Time Saved | — | 12+ hours/week | Freed for features |
| Page Migration Time | — | 2 weeks | Quick adoption |
| Conversion Rate | 1.4% | 2.0% | ~43% improvement |
| Engineering Dependency | 100% | 0% | Full autonomy |
Key Takeaways
- Initiative creates opportunity. This started as a side project and led to a title promotion and company-wide recognition.
- Empowering teams > building features. The CMS multiplied marketing's output without adding engineering headcount.
- Technical solutions should serve business velocity. The best code is code that removes bottlenecks.
Technologies Used
Angular 2, TypeScript, AngularJS, RxJS, Node.js, AWS S3, HTML5, CSS3, SASS, Git, Static Site Generation