Optimizing the LifePlanner product suite and adding a new, approachable planning layout resulting in a new top-selling layout
Background
Erin Condren’s flagship product is the LifePlanner, your one stop, highly customizable planner for balancing all the moving parts of your life. The customer can choose from several weekly or daily planning layouts, book sizes and formats.
Every year, the planner gets refreshed with new dates and artwork to help customers get more organized to bring joy to their lives. Paper planning is a highly competitive market, which means every LifePlanner launch has to bring meaningful and valuable innovation to support and retain our community.
Opportunities
- Add new features to highlight the value of our top-tier planners in the competitive landscape and the background of our current economic landscape
- Simplify the amount of product and customization choices for the customer by exiting lower performing book layouts, sizes and formats.
- Streamline other product features and options that wouldn’t detract from the customer experience that would also reduce internal complexity across multiple departments.
Customer Needs I Addressed
- Creating a new layout that balances weekly and daily planning with tracking overarching needs, notes and to-dos
- Answering top customer requests to remove, update or add certain LifePlanner features
- Making more functional and intuitive updates to core, best-selling accessories
- Launch new and exciting features, products and improvements that make it easier for them to plan, stay organized and achieve their goals
The Dashboard Layout
Layout in Product Offering
Unit Increase from Layout it Replaced in Assortment*
Core Customer Conversion*
Higher Performance over Long-Reigning Top Layout*
* Results from initial product launch selling window, full year selling in progress
In addition to being an integral part of the overall product strategy for this launch, I drove the initiative to refresh and add more value to LifePlanner features for all customers, as well as a new layout option that’s being well received by our core customers.
Dashboard was a layout I had been eager to introduce to our customer for several years, and our 2025-2026 launch was finally the time for it to shine.
In looking at the competitive marketplace, it was becoming clear that we were missing a planner layout that was more approachable to someone newer to planning or didn’t need an in-depth daily planning experience, but still had weekly to-dos, notes or items they wanted to keep track of.
My Contributions
Identifying customer need and conducting market research to confirm strategic action.
Collaborated with the Senior Director of Planning & Merchandising on LifePlanner assortment, product optimization and improvements.
Pitched assortment proposals to Leadership, which included: offerings to streamline, meaningful customer-driven improvements that maintain costs and margins, new features and products to add to support customer and drive sales
Led wireframing and execution on content and product updates for LifePlanner content, new weekly Dashboard layout and sticker and content-focused accessories
Created, maintained and presented internal product guides to communicate updates and improvements for cross-functional use
Served as point-person for internal content-related questions and review other team’s assets to ensure product accuracy