Jim Naylor

The world’s first web experience empowering consumers to completely facilitate the purchase of an automobile on a mobile device - from vehicle selection to signing of contracts - in as little as 10 minutes.

Innovations introduced to the industry:

• Checklist-style checkout process - there are many tradeoffs consumers need to consider when looking at an automobile purchase. Instead of driving customers through a traditional funnel, whereby the platform dictates the order of… Show more

The world’s first web experience empowering consumers to completely facilitate the purchase of an automobile on a mobile device - from vehicle selection to signing of contracts - in as little as 10 minutes.

Innovations introduced to the industry:

• Checklist-style checkout process - there are many tradeoffs consumers need to consider when looking at an automobile purchase. Instead of driving customers through a traditional funnel, whereby the platform dictates the order of tradeoff selection, we chose to empower customers to complete purchase steps in the order of their choosing.
• Reservation Time Protections - in exchange for a customer completing any step in the checklist, they would receive additional 'reservation time' (similar to buying a concert ticket) to ensure another shopper couldn't start a purchase on the same vehicle.
• Financing terms on your terms - customers could perform a soft credit pull with no impact to their credit and be able to customize the combination of down, monthly and term to their hearts content.
• Trade-In Valuation - customers could get a trade in quote from us, and choose to apply it towards the purchase or not, inclusive of rolling negative-equity into a deal.
• Fraud Reduction measures - Driver's License, Income and Identity Verification services and techniques were applied to ensure the customer is who they say they are, ahead of allowing them to complete the purchase of a vehicle.
• Mobile-enabled contract signing Show less

A happy customer is your walking advertisement.

In an industry riddled with data and both its interpretations and misinterpretations, it's easy to get the qualitative lost in the quantitative. I led my team to embark on a side project which would allow us to understand how satisfied our users are with the experiences on our website, strive to make those users happier with new experiences, and see increased conversions as a result.

We introduced what we called, the 'Senti-Meter',… Show more

A happy customer is your walking advertisement.

In an industry riddled with data and both its interpretations and misinterpretations, it's easy to get the qualitative lost in the quantitative. I led my team to embark on a side project which would allow us to understand how satisfied our users are with the experiences on our website, strive to make those users happier with new experiences, and see increased conversions as a result.

We introduced what we called, the 'Senti-Meter', a simple (smiley-face) sentiment capturing widget which allows a user to tell us, in one (non-disruptive) click, how they felt about very specific experiences on our website; with the opportunity to provide additional context around their answer. We tie all of this data to our data warehouse, allowing us to see qualitative and quantitative performance metrics side-by-side.

The Senti-meter is helping establish the success of A/B tests, design changes, and we're also finding it useful in identifying user experience defects and connecting struggling shoppers with our Live Advice team for personal assistance. Show less

Tasked with leveraging social media in a manner that could both empower car shoppers, and help connect them with our dealer partners, my team and I launched an experiment we called @EdmundsLive.

Leveraging Twitter, we proactively connected our expertise with car shoppers in a manner which was personalized to their particular needs. We encouraged shoppers to leverage our experts while negotiating deals, photograph window stickers in exchange for customized TMV (market value) quotes, and… Show more

Tasked with leveraging social media in a manner that could both empower car shoppers, and help connect them with our dealer partners, my team and I launched an experiment we called @EdmundsLive.

Leveraging Twitter, we proactively connected our expertise with car shoppers in a manner which was personalized to their particular needs. We encouraged shoppers to leverage our experts while negotiating deals, photograph window stickers in exchange for customized TMV (market value) quotes, and generally use us as that 'car shopping friend' everyone wants in their back pocket while on a lot.

This effort spawned a larger Live Advice initiative; where a full-time, in-house staff manages Twitter, email, chat and a 1-800 number, all in the interest of executing our brand values through personal, human connections. In 2014, @EdmundsLive was named an Official Honoree of Customer Service in the 18th Annual Webby Awards. Show less

• Drove API and Open Platform evolution at Edmunds!
• Established partnerships between Edmunds & companies looking to leverage the platform
• Engineered the information architecture and design of API responses
• Assisted strategic customers with API implementations
• Ensured API implementations complied with our Terms of Service
• Promote the API at local meetups, hackathons and social media

I immersed my career for nearly two years in understanding the unique problems used car shoppers and dealers experience on a daily basis, in an effort to improve the overall automotive shopping experience. After having spent hundreds of hours ethnographically studying shoppers & dealers in their homes and places of work, I led my team into a deep study of both traditional and reverse-engineered workflows so we could take the best of both, and begin building an extensible platform for our… Show more

I immersed my career for nearly two years in understanding the unique problems used car shoppers and dealers experience on a daily basis, in an effort to improve the overall automotive shopping experience. After having spent hundreds of hours ethnographically studying shoppers & dealers in their homes and places of work, I led my team into a deep study of both traditional and reverse-engineered workflows so we could take the best of both, and begin building an extensible platform for our company to become a disruptive player in the used car selling space for years to come.

After amassing hundreds of ideas, I led the organization into a series of exercises designed to stress test ideas in the market in a short amount of time, ahead of choosing winners and getting underway with development. In order to do this, we took some risks. We convinced both parties that these were real products, and we sold the product to both sides before finally informing them that these were experiments. We learned what people were willing to do, and pay for, ahead of building anything at scale.

All of this work is for not, without execution. My years as an engineer and subsequently as a project manager have made me a strong product leader. My ability to foster trust, rapport, and a shared sense of ownership among my teams has always led to results and offerings that are greater than the sum of talent used to build them. As a believer in Design Thinking methodologies, I leverage and showcase the brilliance of all of the people on a team. I've strived to ensure my products/designs are courteous of the consumer experience, locked-in on business goals, all the while aiming to be differentiated or industry game-changers.

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