Taking Etsy Mobile
When I joined Etsy, the thriving marketplace had no official mobile products. I helped translate what made Etsy distinctive into an entirely new mobile ecosystem built from the ground up.
First official iPhone app
Expanded to iPad & Android
Mobile web at scale
My role
Mobile product strategy, product definition, interaction design, visual design, and cross-functional execution
Team
Product design, iOS, Android, and web engineering
The Challenge
Etsy already had a great product when I arrived in 2011. The community was thriving and the brand had a loyal following. But there was one glaring gap: mobile. Smartphones were rapidly changing how people discovered and shopped online, and Etsy was late to the mobile game. For me, it was an exciting opportunity to help extend a product people already loved onto entirely new platforms.
iPhone App
One of the first orders of business was getting an app into the iPhone ecosystem quickly. We acquired a third-party app called Etsy Lovers, along with its solo developer, and used that as a springboard.
I worked closely with him to reshape the app from the ground up—refining the feature set, aligning it to Etsy’s brand, and rebuilding the interface. The result was Etsy’s first official iPhone app, launched to a huge and eager user base.
I also stayed on the team for a few cycles of app development as we built up the core functionality for buyers and sellers alike.
iPad App
The standard Etsy website actually performed surprisingly well on iPad, even without optimization. But we knew we could do better, so shipping a custom app experience, centered on the behaviors unique to the device was a top priority. The tablet experience was all about lean-back browsing—lounging on the couch, scrolling through beautiful handmade items, and building wishlists. So we focused on that.
The goals were clear:
- Make it delightful
- Don’t mess up what already worked
- Stay true to the Etsy feel
Mobile Web
Since we had tons of data showing that mobile traffic was already hitting our site from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and email referrals, we knew that a solid, performant mobile web site was always going to be necessary. We also built our iPhone and iPad apps to be lean and focused, so there were pages and experiences that would need to be covered by a standard mobile website.
When starting the foundation of our mobile web approach, our north stars were simple:
- Fast load times
- Touch-friendly interactions
- Minimal keyboard input
- Maintain Etsy’s unique aesthetic
I was only at Etsy for three and a half years, but I feel grateful for the amount of high-impact, foundational projects I got to contribute to. Etsy experienced explosive growth during my tenure, and the mobile foundation I helped create expanded into several fully staffed, focused product teams. I had the chance to work on these projects alongside some of the sharpest engineers, designers, and product thinkers I’ve ever met. That time shaped how I think about product development, collaboration, and scale—and it directly set me up for the leadership role I stepped into at DonorsChoose.
But you don't have to take my word for it...
“Time and time again, Dan took needs that were new, rough, and still forming, and shaped them into clear product direction and real shipped work. He brought structure to ambiguity, strong craft, and a pragmatic sense of what it would take to make it real.”
Next case study:
Great design is about craft
It helped Etsy go mobile without losing its soul. Want to build together? Reach out.