Rebuilding cs.money’s core marketplace as revenue grew 4×
I joined cs.money to improve onboarding. I found that Trade and payments were bigger problems than registration, so I moved to the core team and took ownership of the marketplace. By the end of my tenure, top-up conversion had tripled and completed trades had doubled. Company revenue and MAU also grew during this period, with contributions from product work, marketing and market demand.
Senior Growth PM profile and resume- 4×
- Company revenue during my tenure
- 3×
- Top-up conversion
- 2×
- Completed trades
- 3.2M → ~7M
- MAU during my tenure
Revenue and MAU are company results. Product work, marketing, growth in Counter-Strike, and COVID-era demand all contributed. I was responsible for the core product and the improvements to Trade, top-up, and purchases.
- Role
- Product Manager (Onboarding) → Product Owner (Core)
- Period
- 2020–2022
- Direct team
- 20 developers, 5 QA specialists, 1 product manager
- Other teams
- 5 designers and a support product manager
Why I moved from onboarding to the core team
I was hired to improve registration. Before changing it, I checked what happened after users signed up.
-
01
Original task
Improve arrival-to-registration conversion.
-
02
Traffic quality
After we set up Amplitude, we found that roughly 90% of the traffic we examined left within three seconds.
-
03
What was broken
The site could go down for hours. Trades failed. We had no reliable product analytics, and releases took four to six weeks.
-
04
Change in scope
I moved to the core team to fix the product before optimizing the top of the funnel.
A better registration rate would not help if users still could not trade or top up.
Two decisions that a conversion total could hide
Change the assignment when the constraint is elsewhere. Registration was the original brief. Funnel analysis and around 100 customer interviews shifted the work towards Trade and payments. Fixing the route to a completed transaction became more useful than optimising the entry step in isolation.
Read migration results by the work users need to do. Better conversion among new-user cohorts did not settle the migration decision for experienced traders. They still needed workflows from the old site. I made the new product the default while keeping the old one available for about a year and closing those gaps. That accepted the cost of a longer transition to preserve the work existing users depended on.
The product results below come from internal reporting across the rebuild. They are not a single experiment that attributes every improvement to one redesign decision.
What I changed with the core team
As Core Product Owner, I led 20 developers, five QA specialists, and one product manager. I also coordinated five designers and a product manager working with support. The visual direction and several main page concepts already existed. We kept that visual language, rebuilt the main flows, and changed how the team planned and released work.
Trade and purchase flows
We rebuilt Trade, top-up and payment states, Store and direct purchases, inventory and cart, and search and filters.
We applied basic e-commerce conventions: the cart was where users expected it, totals were visible, and the cart had a clear Buy button.
Research and analytics
I conducted around 100 customer interviews. We also used surveys, usability tests, and product data.
Planning and releases
We introduced regular planning, a prioritized backlog, and shared documentation.
The team went from one release every four to six weeks to one every one or two weeks.
How we moved users to the new site
On 8 October 2020, the new site became the default at cs.money. The old product remained available at old.cs.money.
New-user cohorts performed better across the core metrics we tracked.
Experienced traders still needed functions from the old product, including compact item cards.
Conversion was higher for new-user cohorts on the new site, but experienced traders were right about the missing features. I made the new site the default and kept the old one available while we closed the gaps.
New users Default
- cs.moneyThe new marketplace became the main site.
- Simpler flowsThe interface used familiar e-commerce patterns.
- Higher conversionNew-user cohorts performed better across the core flows we tracked.
Existing users Fallback
- old.cs.moneyThe old interface remained available.
- Missing features addedWe restored compact cards and other functions used by experienced traders.
- About one yearThe old site stayed online while users moved to the new product.
View the cs.money launch announcement from 8 October 2020We kept old.cs.money online for about a year, until the new product covered the workflows experienced traders needed.
What changed
Internal reporting showed higher top-up and direct-purchase conversion, along with more completed trades. Company revenue and MAU also grew during the same period.
From Simon Polozov
"Hiring Mike was one of the best decisions for the company. He was a rock for the young team and fresh air for me. His skills and knowledge allowed us to transform the company's primary and other parts into successful user-oriented products. He covers the area where others should have three people: managing the 20-person team, product and business development, product strategy, risk management and also raising & consulting the rest of the product teams."
Tell me what is not working
Tell me about the product and where the team is stuck. If I can help, I’ll suggest what to do first.