O0 Design

Spend with
Ukraine

Mission-driven, uniting, collaborative, supportive, proud

Activism / People's Voice Winner

O0 Design

Activism

People's Voice Winner

Support Ukrainian made products in the time of war. Spend with Ukraine to stand with Ukraine. Ievgeniia Katashynska, Operations Manager

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Q: Can you briefly describe your project and the concept behind it?

A: Spend With Ukraine is a non-profit organisation that curates a web platform with a list of 220+ Ukrainian-rooted businesses. Its mission is to support the Ukrainian economy by promoting world-class Ukrainian products and services worldwide and helping them find customers. The world can see and experience a very different Ukraine while looking at incredible, and exciting products.

Q: Once you settled on your idea, what influenced your decision on the chosen technical approach? How did it differ or go beyond approaches you’ve taken in the past?

A: The project was an O0 Design studio’s self-initiative—an answer to the dire conditions Ukrainian businesses faced during the war. We needed to work quickly and efficiently with the minimum possible resources. In order to save time and costs, we went with no-code tools. Thanks to our partners, it is easy to navigate and discover exciting Ukrainian-rooted businesses operating internationally.

Q: What were some of your biggest learning and takeaways from this project?

A: We are stronger together. Spend With Ukraine united businesses and helped many to stay afloat despite the falling market. It demonstrated what high-end products and services the ‘war-ripped country from a telly’ is producing, fighting the rusty post-colonial biases. Today it helps Ukrainian businesses get visibility, save jobs, generate sustainable growth, support our economy, and enter new markets.

Q: What web technologies, approaches, tools, or resources did you use to develop this experience (WordPress, headless, AI, Sublime Text, HTML5, Adobe XD, etc)?

A: While designing the whole thing in Figma, Webflow was chosen as a main development platform.

Q: How did the final product meet or exceed your expectations? What results did you see?

A: Just in the first 30 days, it raised international sales of the participants by an average of 10%. The project also made many Ukrainians, for the first time, learn that the brands they know and love are Ukrainian. It has been featured on Inc., BBC, The Guardian, CNN, WWD, Voice of America, Wallpaper Magazine, Der Tagesspiegel, and others, gathering over 180 million media impressions.

Q: What did your initial moodboard, wireframe, or prototype look like? How did those ideas change throughout the design process?

A: Initially the project was launched on Readymag and looked a lot different than now. It was a simple landing with all companies listed within one page. But when the initiative grew up we understood that from both SEO and performance perspective we might need eventually to migrate to some more sustainable and easy to update framework. So we did and rebuilt the whole thing on Webflow and got: a robust CMS, and a boost in performance and SEO.