I conceived and founded a new kind of social medium after finding fellow artisans felt locked in to Instagram (or just avoided it).
We Make is first of all a community space for makers with on- and offline elements but it also prioritizes the connection of makers with potential customers. (And, it's a work-in-progress!) Backend development by Stature IT
Web-based community platform
Startup Founder Product Strategy User Experience (UX) User Interface (UI) Front-end Development Copywriting Community Development Social Media Management Taking out the trash
What do we bring forward from conventional social media to serve the richness of handcraft? What do we add or re-invent?
Through user interviews, surveys and iteration, I evolved existing social models to fit the unique opportunities.
Some things stay the same: members can discover makers and follow them individually
An inspiring way to discover new makers are craft-based feeds, which can also be followed
Your home feed displays the work of every maker you follow plus curated posts from your favorite crafts
Object images are prioritized with minimized peripheral content
Member metadata are revealed in the slide-out modal
The post modal
As a core value, We Make is open to makers of all levels, from beginner to master. At the same time, it's critical that the browsing experience highlight excellent work—feedback from makers and appreciators strongly confirmed this.
Since counting "likes" is unreliable, I developed a new system of grading that is independent of popularity but still gives control to the community. This has evolved over time to become human-powered *and* scalable.
Each craft's feed is curated while the uncurated feed is only a click/tap away
While Instagram's algorithm is universally hated by makers, it does serve to keep the browsing experience very stimulating. On We Make, that fresh infusion of the unexpected comes from following human-curated craft feeds.
The core of the curation model is based on upvotes by select makers from each craft. In simple terms, when a post receives a sufficient number of upvotes, it is moved to its craft's curated feed. So, the community makes the decision while avoiding the trap of popularity and ensuring that no single curator has too much influence.
Curators serve limited terms and are awarded curator status based primarily on their experience and the quality of their own work.
Site administrators set the upvote threshold for each craft in ratio with the number of curators which, in turn, corresponds to the size of that craft's community.
The curation work that happens at the craft level is used in other parts of the site including Collections which include work from multiple crafts
Though We Make serves makers and appreciators symbiotically, I knew that the makers had to come first. So, while still building the full platform, I built and launched Maker Map and welcomed the first 150 master-level makers. These became the founding members when the platform launched. Even now the map remains an important part of the We Make experience.
*As named by Andrew Chen of a16z
Makers and appreciators can explore the map by area and filter the results by craft.
We Make uses email extensively for outreach, onboarding, newsletter and transactional messages.
Our cold outreach invitation to makers yielded over 15% registration(!). By comparison, a standard of excellence in cold outreach campaigns is 6%, and that's only for click-throughs.
The automated onboarding series introduces new members to the platform's unique approach
We Make uses ActiveCampaign along with Postmark to manage emails including onboarding automation
The open rate over all emails is 72% compared to the standard high of 25% (and 40% is considered off-the-charts)
Ongoing newsletters announce updates and opportunities such as member surveys.
As a community space, it's critical to hear from members in the decision-making process but it's also important for members to know that their needs and perspectives are valued. Publishing the results also creates a sense of "us" and provides insights for everyone.
Conversational forms integrated into the site make the survey experience feel more organic and greatly improve completion rates
Survey results are published in blog posts where graphs are updated dynamically
Over three-quarters of new members fill out the opening survey...
and over half of those leave valuable written thoughts
“I’d love to be part of a unique platform with other skilled makers, where time can be taken to tell the stories of my works, and where there are people who value the long road and all its details .”
“Looking for a place where I can find inspiration and connect with other makers and appreciators in a space that isn’t trying to feed me content that is irrelevant to those goals.”
Examples of makers' feedback
While We Make aims to eventually provide makers with an alternative to Instagram, the social giant is still where the majority of makers share online so I created an IG account as we launched
Collaborating with many prominent makers in two campaign types, the account gained the first 1,000 followers in four weeks
The #whywemake campaign highlights statements from makers' We Make profiles, generally as collaborative posts
