CarExpert is Australia’s largest new car website, and I joined during a period of rapid growth as the business prepared for its 2025 IPO. My focus was redesigning key parts of the consumer experience and building a scalable design system that aligned with the brand refresh, improved usability, and positioned CarExpert to compete more sharply with rivals like CarSales and Drive.com.
When I joined CarExpert, the business was in the middle of rapid growth and preparing for a 2025 IPO. As Australia’s largest new car website with a strong enthusiast following, CarExpert needed to sharpen its product, align with a refreshed brand, and position itself against competitors like CarSales and Drive.com.
Working closely with the founder, CEO, and a fully remote development team across Australia, I focused on reimagining the consumer experience and establishing a scalable design system. My work spanned critical areas such as the Showroom (a major SEO driver), News & Reviews, the Homepage, and Deals. All brought in line with CarExpert’s new brand and (most) are live now on the site.
The result was a more consistent, resilient product experience that positioned CarExpert for growth and set a stronger foundation as the business moved towards IPO.
Beyond consumer-facing work, I also focused on CarExpert’s internal product. A platform designed to connect customers with local dealers. Underdeveloped in its early state, the tool created friction for both staff and dealers using it day-to-day.
We approached this by running discovery with the customer support team and conducting user research, including JTBD interviews with dealers. This surfaced frustrations, gaps, and opportunities from both sides of the experience. The findings were presented back to the executive team, giving them clarity on where the tool was falling short and how it could be improved.
While the tool was never shipped due to shifting business priorities, this research and design work provided leadership with a foundation to build from in future iterations.
Another major project was the Sell My Car feature, which allowed customers to sell their cars sight unseen and receive top-dollar offers from dealers. This was a revenue driver CarExpert saw as an opportunity to increase profitability, so we ran multiple rounds of experimentation across both the customer journey and the technical implementation.
To guide the work, we conducted user research and JTBD interviews with dealers, the paying stakeholders who relied on immediate access to cars. Their input shaped how we approached pricing transparency, trust signals, and the communication flow between buyers and sellers. I also spent time in the field speaking directly with dealers to validate expectations and workflows.
The outcome was a more balanced experience, simple and transparent for customers, while efficient and valuable for the dealer network.
Here’s a look at some of the work, from design system foundations through to key product features now live on CarExpert.
Scale-up companies are interesting: I’ve quickly learned that working in a scale-up requires wearing multiple hats. With limited resources, you often need to step into roles like PM, marketer, or even engineer to get the job done.
Perfection is impossible: Moving so fast perfection is impossible. My mantra is to compare to the past not the dream state - progress, not perfection.
Communication is key: Collaboration is essential in a fast-paced environment. Designs can’t be created in a silo, ideas need to be shared regularly with stakeholders. Without good communication, you’ll end up reworking designs over and over instead of delivering something that actually works for the user.
Always look through mutiple lenses: Talking directly to both sides of the marketplace gave me richer insights than data alone could.
