Timeline: 6 months | Role: Lead User Research, Lead UI/UX Design, Brand Design

Building a New Revenue Stream from Hidden Demand

Xe.com gets 300 million visits per year. But we were only making money from 16% of them.

The vast majority of our users—65%—came to track exchange rates, not transfer money. We were serving them a free tool and showing them ads, leaving millions in potential revenue on the table.

The question wasn't whether we could monetize them. It was whether they'd pay to be monetized.

About Xe

Xe.com is one of the world's most popular currency sites, known for exchange rate information and international money transfers. But when 84% of your traffic doesn't convert to your core business, you either find a new way to serve them or watch competitors do it instead.

The Currency Tracker Paradox

Our users were obsessed with exchange rates. They checked daily, sometimes hourly. But when we dug deeper, we discovered something surprising: Xe was their starting point, not their destination.

After tracking a rate on Xe, users would bounce to TradingView, Bloomberg, or Reuters to do their actual analysis. We were the gateway to the world of forex, but other platforms owned the journey.

Our competitive analysis revealed why:

• Fragmented Information: Currency data was scattered across platforms. Users needed multiple tabs open to get a complete picture of the forex market.
• Distracting Experiences: Existing tools were cluttered with ads and poor UX that made analyzing complex data even harder.
• Built for Stocks, Not Forex: Most platforms were designed for equity traders. The specific needs of currency traders like comparing multiple pairs on one chart or tracking central bank decisions, were afterthoughts.

The Hypothesis

What if we built what our users were already trying to cobble together themselves? A professional-grade currency dashboard that treated forex as a first-class citizen, not a side feature.

The opportunity was clear. The risk was equally clear: could we convince stakeholders to invest in an unproven subscription product when our existing ad-based model was "good enough"?

Testing Demand Before Building Supply

Rather than spend months building and hoping people would pay, we flipped the script. I led the effort to create a compelling vision of what could exist, then put it in front of our users to see if they'd vote with their wallets.

We designed a beta concept featuring: - Drag-and-drop widgets for complete dashboard customization - Multi-currency chart overlays to compare pairs side-by-side - Real-time news integration tied to currency movements - Advanced technical indicators built for forex analysis

Then we built a landing page, created targeted ads on the main Xe site, and opened a waitlist.

The result? Over 6,000 signups in one month—organically, with no paid acquisition.

That waitlist became our business case. Combined with profit projections and user research insights, it convinced stakeholders to fund the project, license professional data feeds, and allocate engineering resources to build a new product line from scratch.

Designing for Discovery

The beta wasn't just a product it was designed to be a learning engine. We released to 2,000 daily active users from our waitlist, carefully watching: - Which widgets got used (and which got ignored) - How users customized their layouts - What features they'd pay premium for vs. expect for free - Where they still left Xe to use other tools

The MVP's customization was intentional. We didn't know exactly what currency enthusiasts needed most, so we gave them the building blocks and watched what they built.

What I Learned

This project taught me that user research isn't just about understanding problems—it's about quantifying opportunity in a way that moves business leaders.

The 6,000 person waitlist mattered more than any user interview transcript. It translated "users want this" into "users will pay for this," which is the only language that unlocks budget in a risk-averse organization.

For future zero-to-one products, I'll prioritize demand validation earlier. Build the smallest thing that lets users vote with commitment (a waitlist, a pre-order, a deposit), not just interest. Interest is cheap. Commitment reveals truth.