ocalendar
Simplifying event discovery
This is my journey of designing and launching ocalendar, my first digital product, and its rapid growth from 310 to 10,000+ users in 30 days.
Role & Services
Product & Visual Design Strategy
Timeline
3 months - 2024
The events market in Brazil generated R$ 291.1 billion in 2023, representing about 3.8% of the GDP, thanks to a strong return to in-person and hybrid events post-pandemic. While the pandemic caused a R$ 230 billion revenue loss from 2020 to 2021, it also accelerated the rise of virtual experiences, allowing people to engage culturally online and increasing familiarity with online ticket purchases.
The events sector in Brazil is thriving but remains fragmented, with over 30 companies selling tickets for concerts, festivals, art exhibitions, sports events, and more. This situation makes it difficult for users to stay informed about local happenings, as they must check multiple websites.
Recognizing this gap, I decided to create a product that consolidates all city events into an easy-to-use platform.
The average person is exposed to about 34 gigabytes of information daily, equivalent to around 100,000 words. For context, a single daily newspaper contains more data than a person in the 17th century would encounter in a lifetime. The rise of social media has intensified this information overload, making it difficult to process and retain all the information we face.
Before pitching the idea to my friend and founding partner, James, I conducted preliminary benchmarking to identify market gaps. I discovered many event categories were not well promoted, with only a few players focused on these areas. While defining the event categories for ocalendar, it became essential to map out the main competitors in each category to understand the overall landscape.
Before building the product, we needed to validate the idea, understand if people really faced the problems we identified, and learn more about how users search for events. So we conducted a survey to gather insights and determine which event categories people most cared about.
At first, we decided to focus on 3 categories:
As I got deeper into the project, I realized we needed a modular interface that could adapt seamlessly to different event data categories. Just like how LEGO lets you build everything from buildings to robots using the same pieces, our design had to be flexible enough to handle various types of event information within the same structure.
This page shows all events happening in the city, allowing users to view various categories in a single place. See it live at: www.ocalendar.io/events
Not everything made it to the MVP, we had to remove and postpone some features. Things started to change after the influx of new users and their feedback. Here are some changes we've made:
Adding this section to the event details page made it easy for users to discover similar events and explore other categories. This improved our internal linking, enhancing their relevance to search engines and helping us rank among the top results for various events.
We initially hadn't planned this section, but adding it strategically at the end of the event details grew our social media presence, resulting in 152 new Instagram followers in a month.
After launching ocalendar, we saw an impressive increase in organic traffic, jumping from 310 users in May to over 10,000 in June. Page views followed a similar trend, showing that our SEO and design strategies increased user acquisition. Four months post-launch, we reached an average of over 30,000+ organic visits per month, and this growth continues as we expand into new event categories. We are learning to adapt to the unique characteristics of each category while exploring ways to implement a monetization model soon. Feel free to check out our website at ocalendar.io!
Increase in Organic Traffic
From 310 users in May to 10,000+ in June
2,042%
Increase in Page Views
2,200 in May - 19,000 page views in June
763%
Organic Search Traffic Sessions
419 in May to 12000 sessions in June