Redesigning the content discovery experience for a live automotive marketplace.
Redesigning the content discovery experience for a live automotive marketplace.
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Role: Product Designer · Timeline: 2 months · Status: Shipped · Team: Marketing, Product, Engineering
CarsIreland is an online automotive marketplace where people buy and sell vehicles across Ireland. Its editorial content - reviews, news and buying advice - all lived under a single, flat structure that had stopped scaling as the library grew.
I led the design of a new Content Hub that splits editorial into dedicated, filterable sections for News, Reviews and Advice, giving readers a faster route to relevant articles and giving the Marketing team a flexible way to organise and feature content. The redesign shipped across desktop and mobile.
The Problem
The Problem
Before the redesign, every article - whether a review, a news piece or an advice guide - was managed under one content structure. As more content was published, that structure worked against everyone.
Readers had no way to filter by category, so relevant articles were hard to find and research took longer than it should. Engagement was low, and the Marketing team's content wasn't reaching as many people as it could. The existing experience simply wasn't designed to scale.
Research
Research
I used a mixed-methods approach - discovery workshops, requirement gathering, marketing sessions and affinity mapping - structured loosely around the Double Diamond to move from problem to solution.
A competitor analysis was the turning point. Benchmarked against leading automotive marketplaces, CarsIreland scored 12/30, while industry leaders like Autotrader UK, CarGurus and Cars.com scored 22/30. The gap was consistent: they used dedicated content hubs, strong search and filtering, and consistent templates - exactly the areas holding CarsIreland back. Those findings set the priorities for the redesign.
A cross-team workshop with Product, Marketing and Ad Operations aligned the content structure against both editorial and commercial goals before any screens were designed.
Design
Design
Working with the Marketing team, I mapped a user flow that restructured the CMS around distinct content types while respecting the platform's technical constraints. From there I moved through low- and mid-fidelity wireframes to test the structure before committing to visual design.
Iteration
Iteration
Continuous stakeholder feedback shaped the design. A few of the changes that had the biggest impact:
Differentiated News, Reviews, Advice and Featured content
Gave each content type its own visual treatment, creating a clearer hierarchy and helping users tell them apart at a glance.
Moved the model filter to the top of the page
Improved discoverability and matched the search-and-filter behaviour users already expect.
Removed the billboard advertisement from the landing page
Reduced visual clutter and let editorial content become the primary focus.
High-Fidelity Designs
High-Fidelity Designs
All Articles
All Articles
The main entry point to the Content Hub. Users can browse the latest articles, filter by category and jump to topics that match their interests - designed to encourage exploration beyond a single article.
Reviews
Reviews
Expert vehicle reviews, organised so users can compare makes and models while researching a purchase.
News
News
The latest automotive news and industry updates in one dedicated section, so timely information is easy to find.
Advice
Advice
Practical guidance across the ownership journey - buying, finance, maintenance and driving. Also supports sponsored content, kept transparent through clear labelling.
Impact & Reflection
Impact & Reflection
Impact
The redesign gave editorial content a structure built to grow:
Improved content organisation through dedicated categories
Enabled Marketing to manage and categorise articles more efficiently
Created flexibility to feature sponsored content within dedicated hubs
Established a scalable structure to support future editorial growth
Improved discoverability through clearer navigation and information architecture
Delivered a more consistent browsing experience across desktop and mobile
What I learned
Working across Marketing, Product and Development reinforced how much good design depends on balancing commercial goals, editorial workflows and user experience at the same time. Small changes to navigation, hierarchy and reusable components had an outsized effect on usability - something continuous feedback kept surfacing.
Reflecting afterwards, I also saw clear opportunities for AI-assisted design tools to speed the work up. Generating layout variations, exploring alternative card designs and iterating components quickly could have cut time on repetitive updates and reached stakeholder sign-off faster.
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