The Walleyed Zone community audit and strategic redesign of a 900+ member fishing community on the Detroit River, focused on reducing churn, clarifying member value, and restructuring content and community experience for a successful relaunch.
Role: Community Strategist · Auditor · Consultant
Tech Stack: Circle.so
Focus: 3-month audit & strategy · Relaunch planned January 2026
In this Community Audit & Redesign, we analyzed The Walleyed Zone, an online fishing community based in Detroit serving anglers along the Detroit River. With over 900 members, the community looked healthy on the surface, but the numbers told a different story.
Their churn rate reached 44% in the first year and an alarming 888% in the second year. This signaled that the member experience and structure needed a full diagnostic. I was brought in to conduct a comprehensive community audit & redesign, examining the entire ecosystem, pricing, structure, content, and onboarding to design a roadmap for a successful relaunch.
This audit and redesign strategy took place over a three-month period, with recommendations structured to support a staged relaunch scheduled for January 2026.
Team
My Role
I owned the entire audit, strategy direction, UX recommendations, and future-state planning, including:
I approached these questions using the Double Diamond framework — Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver — focusing first on diagnosing the current state and then mapping a clear, strategic path forward for the relaunch.
The community was launched with the hope that it would run itself. There were no consistent updates, experiments, or iteration cycles in place — a major driver of high churn.
Members were encountering outdated, low-value content. Courses and resources were difficult to navigate and in some cases no longer relevant to the realities of fishing on the Detroit River.
There was a significant gap between what the client thought a community needed and what members actually needed to feel supported, engaged, and retained.
The community had gone live without meaningful market research, MVP testing, or validation. There had been no structured effort to confirm demand, refine the offer, or adjust based on early feedback.
Members weren’t sure what to do next, where to go, or how to get consistent value. The journey from joining to becoming an active, long-term member was not intentionally designed.
The audit surfaced deep structural and strategic issues. Translating pages of insights, metrics, and behavioral patterns into something actionable required clarity and education.
Solution: I created a full audit report, broke the recommendations into phased priorities, and facilitated review sessions with the client and community manager to walk through the “why” behind each proposed change.
There was no clear retention strategy, content plan, or consistent “reason to stay” for members beyond initial curiosity or support for the brand.
Solution: I redefined the core value proposition, recommended a new content architecture, re-mapped the member journey, and designed a retention-focused structure that emphasized recurring value and ongoing engagement.
The content library was scattered and poorly structured, and many resources were outdated or misaligned with what walleye anglers actually needed.
Solution: I restructured the content catalog, identified resources to retire or update, and proposed new content pillars based on actual member needs and behaviors.
The client was not conducting regular check-ins on community health, engagement trends, or member satisfaction.
Solution: I helped the internal community manager establish review rhythms, analytics tracking, and recurring content and engagement checkpoints, so they could make informed adjustments over time instead of reacting too late.
No major feature requests were fully out of scope; however, several ideas required longer-term implementation or future content development and were scheduled as potential post-relaunch phases.
The result of this engagement was a clear, actionable roadmap for relaunching The Walleyed Zone community with a stronger structure, clearer value proposition, and a more intentional member journey designed to reduce churn and increase engagement.
While full quantitative results will be measured post-relaunch, the project equipped the client and their community manager with: