TCGplayer

TCGplayer’s customer-facing marketplace was a large, monolithic application built primarily for desktop use. Many pages still relied on rigid, table-based layouts that were difficult to adapt to smaller screens.

The company had explored full redesigns with outside agencies, but putting those concepts into production remained a challenge. A complete redesign would have required coordinating changes across a large number of pages, systems, and teams while keeping the marketplace running.

We had ideas for where the product should go. What we needed was a manageable way to get there.

During a one-week internal hackathon, I explored whether we could separate mobile support from the larger visual redesign.

I kept the existing appearance largely intact and rebuilt the underlying layouts to be responsive. That allowed development to begin without waiting for every page to be redesigned:

• Make the existing marketplace usable across screen sizes
• Improve individual pages and features over time
• Avoid tying mobile support to one large redesign and launch

By the end of the week, I had created a working prototype covering roughly 90% of the customer-facing page types.

The prototype gave the team a concrete alternative to rebuilding everything at once. TCGplayer could create a responsive foundation first, then modernize the visual experience in smaller, more manageable pieces.

The difficult part was deciding what each page could afford to lose and what could be repositioned without hurting usability on a smaller screen.

Product names, card conditions, sellers, prices, quantities, filters, and purchasing controls all competed for space. On smaller screens, I needed to decide what customers should see immediately, what could move elsewhere, and how purchasing interactions could change without becoming unfamiliar.

Those decisions also had to work across many different page types. The prototype needed to demonstrate a reusable approach rather than solve only a few carefully selected screens.

The prototype showed that mobile support did not have to wait for a full redesign. TCGplayer could establish responsive behavior first, then update the visual design page by page.

I also designed and built an in-store catalog and ordering kiosk for local game stores.

Stores could have far more cards in stock than they could reasonably display. Customers often browsed display cases or dense binders, then asked an employee whether particular cards were available.

The kiosk gave customers a way to search the store’s broader inventory themselves. They could:

• Search and browse available cards
• Review product details and pricing
• Add items to a cart
• Create an order for the store to fulfill

Customers could search the store’s inventory without waiting for an employee, then submit an order for staff to fulfill. Store employees no longer had to guide every card search personally.

I worked on the kiosk from the initial wireframes and customer flows through product stories, interface design, and frontend development.

The experience needed to make sense without training. Search, availability, product details, cart management, and order creation all had to be clear to someone walking up to the kiosk for the first time.

It also needed to fit into tools retailers already used. I worked with the API team on the inventory and ordering services, then connected the kiosk’s configuration to the existing retailer account portal.

Another major project was creating a hosted storefront platform for TCGplayer retailers.

Most participating stores already maintained their inventory in TCGplayer. The opportunity was to turn that existing data into a complete customer-facing website without asking each retailer to build or populate one themselves.

I created a system of more than 20 storefront templates that stores could choose from. Launching a site required little more than uploading logos and replacing a few pieces of placeholder content. Banner artwork was provided, while product inventory, card details, and card imagery were populated from TCGplayer through its APIs.

The templates needed to look different without becoming 20 separate products to maintain. They shared a reusable foundation but offered different layouts and visual treatments, all built to work with the same retailer data.

The platform ultimately supported more than 600 retailer websites hosted through Umbraco Cloud. It gave stores a usable ecommerce presence with very little setup while allowing TCGplayer to operate the entire network through a shared system.

These projects expanded how TCGplayer served both shoppers and retailers. The responsive prototype covered roughly 90% of the marketplace’s customer-facing page types in one week. The kiosk brought store inventory onto the sales floor. The hosted storefront system launched ecommerce sites for more than 600 retailers.

Each project had to work within an existing platform. I focused on changes that could ship incrementally and reusable systems that would not become hundreds of separate maintenance problems.