The company
Bells of Steel is a company that sells gym training equipment. It is based in Canada and also serves customers in the United States. The brand focuses on athletes and people who care about performance and high-quality training equipment.
How I Joined the Project
I started working with Bells of Steel through Upwork as a freelance designer. At first, I worked on specific design tasks, mainly creating banners and other visual assets for marketing campaigns.
As time went on, I became involved in more important projects, including building promotional and informational pages for the website. This happened naturally as I learned more about the products and earned the team’s trust.
After this initial period, I was hired as a full-time member of the team, taking on broader responsibilities across the company’s digital operations.
The Challenge
The company was growing quickly, which meant there was always a high volume of marketing campaigns, frequent website updates, and tight deadlines tied to sales events.
This environment required speed, organization, and visual consistency. At the same time, I saw opportunities to improve the user interface and make the design more consistent without slowing down the team’s workflow.
My Role
I worked directly on strategic website pages that supported both business goals and brand communication. Most of my work focused on promotional landing pages created for special campaigns, limited-time offers, and seasonal events.
These pages needed to clearly explain the value of each offer, organize information in an easy-to-read way, and help customers make purchase decisions.
I also worked on major sales events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These campaigns required close collaboration between the marketing and business teams while working under very tight deadlines. My role was to turn business requirements into fully functional pages that were ready to go live during these important sales periods.
Besides promotional pages, I designed upsell experiences that became part of the shopping journey, helping increase the average order value without creating friction for customers.
I also built informational pages, including pages about the company’s showrooms and pages featuring partner athletes, helping strengthen the brand’s online presence.
Improvements I Proposed
As I became more familiar with the website, I noticed visual inconsistencies in buttons, colors, and other interface elements. Although the company already had a style guide, it was not being applied consistently across the site.
Embora não tenha ocorrido uma migração completa do site, a ferramenta foi incorporada ao processo em parte da operação, o que já representou um avanço relevante.
I gradually introduced improvements that helped standardize the interface while respecting the team’s existing workflow and avoiding disruptions.Embora não tenha ocorrido uma migração completa do site, a ferramenta foi incorporada ao processo em parte da operação, o que já representou um avanço relevante.
I also identified opportunities to improve the page creation and maintenance process. Based on these findings, I suggested adopting Elementor as a supporting tool inside WordPress because it would make page creation faster, easier to maintain, and give the team more flexibility.
The website was not fully migrated to Elementor, but the tool was adopted in part of the workflow, which already brought meaningful improvements.
Working Process
My daily work involved constant collaboration with different teams, especially Marketing and Business.
Many projects were tied to campaigns with fixed launch dates; I needed to understand requirements quickly and deliver high-quality work within short deadlines.
This required balancing speed with quality while maintaining clear communication across everyone involved in the project.
Results and Impact
Throughout the project, I contributed to several important moments for the company, especially during large commercial campaigns.
During one of the biggest campaigns, the team shared internally that the company had achieved record sales and strong business results. Although I did not have direct access to detailed performance metrics, the positive feedback I received and the recognition from the team showed that my work played an important role in supporting those campaigns.
My own growth within the company also reflected that impact. I started as a freelancer and later became a full-time team member, taking on more strategic responsibilities over time.
What I Learned
This experience strengthened my ability to work in fast-paced, results-driven environments. I gained a deeper understanding of e-commerce design and learned how design decisions can influence user behavior and conversion.
I also improved my communication skills while working remotely with international teams and coordinating with different departments.
Another important lesson was realizing that my contribution could go beyond design work. Improving processes and helping the team work more efficiently became just as valuable as the visual work itself.
Conclusion
My experience at Bells of Steel allowed me to work in a real business environment where design is closely connected to business performance.
Beyond creating pages, I contributed to important marketing campaigns, helped improve the visual consistency of the website, and supported better workflows that made the team’s work more efficient.