Case study - Automattic for Agencies
Reinventing product referrals
Agencies help small businesses succeed with WordPress, but reselling plugins and tools on their behalf was messy. Legacy workflows involved codes, emails, and license handoffs. It created friction for agencies, confusion for clients, and overhead for everyone. We set out to design a new standard that made referring products as easy as adding items to a cart.
Establishing a scalable model
We aligned early on a key principle: Agencies curate. Clients pay. Both stay in control. To deliver on that, I led the end-to-end design of a flexible referral mode built directly into the marketplace flow. Agencies can toggle into referral mode, build a cart, and send it directly to the client. Once purchased, plugin keys are ready to be linked to the site. No follow-ups needed.
Communicating intent early
To quickly align stakeholders, I introduced cross-functional breadboarding sessions with product, design, and engineering. We mapped features together to clarify intent early. This cut our iteration cycles in half, enabling strategic delivery ahead of the WordCamp US deadline. Breadboarding was so successful it's now core to our workflow.
Extending the design system
The entire experience was built on the evolving WordPress design system. I made deliberate choices to: Reuse patterns wherever possible for scale and consistency. Establish DataView as a flexible, learn-once component used across referral history and plugin management. This has improved both engineering velocity and user predictability, while keeping the platform cohesive as we grow.
Contributing to 66% of agency sales
Built into our marketplace platform, referral mode enables seamless cart sharing—helping drive two-thirds of agency revenue and inspiring an internal initiative to expand our marketplace with hundreds more Woo plugins.