qdq rebranding: directory redesign & new revenue channels

Project overview

qdq is a business directory and digital marketing platform for local businesses in Spain. Ahead of the company's 2023-2024 brand unification, I worked within the Product team shaping the strategy behind the qdq.com and directory redesign, deciding what to prioritize across the corporate site and directory architecture, opening a new revenue channel (Google AdSense), and supporting the company-wide brand rollout through internal training materials and a proposed brand reference portal.

Challenge

qdq.com was seen as useful but outdated, and it carried two products under one roof, the corporate site and the local business directory, each with a different problem: the directory needed a clearer path from "find a business" to "take action," and neither the corporate site's information architecture nor the directory's category structure had been revisited in years, despite the traffic volume the directory received.

My Role · Product Strategy & Information Architecture · Prioritization sessions, directory and corporate site redesign, AdSense strategy, support tooling, internal brand rollout. Visual identity & qdq.com UI led by the Brand/Product design team.

Objectives

1. Exploration & Context

I joined the Product team's weekly sessions where we jointly decided what to redesign first, weighing effort against expected impact across the corporate site and the directory. Alongside my lead and the Customer team, I ran research into what business owners actually prioritized, both about the product itself and about how they wanted their own business information presented.

2. Flow Design & Initial Decisions

On the corporate site, we reworked the information architecture, restructuring navigation and category organization based on what the research showed users actually looked for, not the legacy structure. On the directory side, the focus was the business-listing page: where to place contact buttons and key information to shorten the path to conversion, and how to organize business categories across the whole directory. Every IA and flow decision was reviewed as a team.

3. Key Iterations

We tracked GA4 daily post-launch (session time, drop-off points) to validate whether each change actually improved UX, iterating from there. I also built a Google AdSense strategy for the directory, turning it into a real revenue channel (~€2,000/month), and worked on a strategy to open the directory's traffic to advertising. On the support side, I worked with Marketing to strengthen the Qloe chatbot, writing the FAQ content that fed its knowledge base.

4. Scalability

I extended the same thinking beyond the two core products: redesigning company-wide letter and presentation templates, and proposing brand.qdq.com (an internal brand reference portal) so every team could apply the new identity consistently without manual review.

a) Key Deliverables

• Redesigned IA for the corporate site and the directory
• New business-listing flow prioritizing conversion
• Google AdSense channel generating ~€2,000/month
• AdSense strategy opening the directory to advertising revenue
• Qloe chatbot FAQ content, reducing repetitive support tickets
• Internal brand reference portal (proposed & scoped)
• Company-wide letter and presentation templates

b) Design Learnings

Prioritization decisions carry more weight than any single screen: the sessions where we decided what to redesign first shaped the outcome more than any individual interface choice. A brand rollout is also only as strong as its least-visible touchpoint, which is why the internal reference portal mattered as much as the redesign itself.

c) Next Steps

When I left, a second phase was already scoped: pushing the business-listing page further with tiered "upgrades" that gave businesses more visibility within qdq's traffic, continuing to build out the AdSense strategy, opening a dedicated ad space for businesses, and further iterating on both the chatbot and the directory based on the conversion data gathered so far.

Outcome

Following the rebranding and redesign, qdq.com visits grew from 300K to 2.5M over the following period. The Google AdSense strategy added a new, measurable revenue stream (~€2,000/month), and the new business-listing flow and IA restructuring translated the traffic increase into higher user trust and stronger conversion across the directory.