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I was the first Web Designer hired for Paul Allen's first e-commerce venture; Mercata.com. At Mercata we created a whole new business model which harnessed the power of viral marketing and the internet to gather people together to purchase items in what we dubbed the "Power Buy", so we could buy in bulk from the manufacturer and pass along those savings to our customers.

This was a very exciting time to be working as a Web Designer in the industry, because e-commerce was in it's infancy everything we were creating was new to us and the world. It felt like we were pioneers and shaping the future. Although, one of the disadvantages was that since everything was brand new, nothing had been tested, and to top it off we were creating a new co-op type business model where the more people who joined these "Power Buys" the lower the price would go. From a Web Designer's perspective this created a whole new set of challenges, because I first had to educate our customers on how this new business model worked, as well as giving them an incentive to wait the 7 days to save a significant amount of money. This didn't always go over so smoothly, so I came up with an idea to host a monthly luncheon with our Customer Service Representative to listen what our customers were complaining about. This really helped me create a better user experience and ultimately made more money for the company.