Location Intelligence
Growth
Freemium
SEO
Free Access to a Paid Data Platform, Without Giving the Platform Away
A free, public product that delivers real location insights with no signup, converting unfamiliar visitors into paying users.
The problem
Placer’s customers came mostly from industry word-of-mouth. Users who didn’t already know the platform couldn’t see its value, and trial numbers stayed low.
What I did
Designed a free, public product that delivers real location insights with no signup, built as a template system that generates a page for every venue and zip code, converting unfamiliar visitors into paying users and opening a new SEO front.
The result
A live public product where a Google search leads straight to data, not to a login wall.
Role & Context
The moment
Leadership kept hearing the same feedback: people who didn’t already know Placer couldn’t understand what it does or why it’s worth paying for. The platform’s power was locked behind a signup, so the only users who converted were the ones who arrived already convinced. Growth had a ceiling, and it was the front door.
The challenge
Generous, but not too generous
The core tension: expose enough of a complex, paid data platform to prove its value, without hurting the business it funds.
Every piece of data was a decision: does showing this convert a visitor, or replace the product? The answer became a design pattern: real value first, and the lock placed exactly where the value is proven, a blurred metric with an unlock, a gated deep-dive after the free insight, turning every page into both a proof and a conversion point.
Decision 01
One template, not pages
The real entry point wasn’t Placer’s homepage, it was a Google search: someone looking up a specific store, brand, or zip code.
So instead of designing pages, I designed a template system: one structure that programmatically generates a page for every US venue and every zip code, each with real data, internal cross-links, and its own conversion moment. Design once, rank everywhere.
Decision 02
Two page types to cover every persona
Working with a UX researcher who interviewed users at scale, we mapped the personas the free product should serve.
Two page types covered them all: places (a specific venue or brand) and areas (zip codes), serving both the retail-focused and the location-focused personas with the same system.
What didn’t work
Early direction, rejected
The explainer video
An earlier direction was a video showcasing the platform’s capabilities, telling visitors what Placer can do.
It underperformed, and the lesson shaped the product: unfamiliar users don’t need to be told the value, they need to experience it. The product replaced the pitch: search a brand, get real data.
Decision 03
Adapt, don’t build
Engineering resources were limited, so the free product was designed within a hard constraint.
The constraint I designed within
Adapt the platform’s existing components rather than invent new ones, reshaping them for an audience seeing the data for the first time, with the same template system responsive down to mobile.
What changed
Live today, as Placer’s public front
Anyone can search a brand or zip code and get real visit data, trends, and rankings, free, no signup.
Reflection
Four years and several product cycles later, the core structure survived: search a place, get real data, hit the lock exactly where the value is proven. That’s the validation I’ll take.