Varmply
varmply.vercel.app ↗A creator-brand marketplace for the Nigerian music economy — linking artists to sponsorships with verified performance and escrow payouts.
The brief. Nigerian music is having a global moment. Ayra Starr sells out London. Burna Boy headlines Coachella. But most working artists — the ones with real audiences and real influence — still negotiate brand deals over WhatsApp, with no contracts, no metrics, and no guarantee of payment. Varmply was built to fix that.
Two users, one trust problem. Creators don't get paid until they've already done the work. Brands don't know if they got what they paid for. The design challenge wasn't about making two dashboards — it was about building a system both sides trusted enough to show up to. Escrow holds the funds. Verified metrics hold the proof. The design communicates both.
The approach. I owned design and build from first wireframe to deployed product. The homepage needed to credentialize a new product in a market with no category — so every section is doing persuasion work, not decoration. Real artist names instead of “Creator Name.” Escrow as the headline feature. A phone mockup that shows the actual UI, not a gradient placeholder. The build became part of the portfolio.
Design breakdown
Added the phone mockup after the section felt like a product page, not a product. The dashboard UI inside visualises the experience rather than explaining it.
The escrow framing answers a known real anxiety in the Nigerian creator economy. 'Escrow' does more persuasion work than a feature description — it signals Varmply as the neutral party holding both sides accountable.
Three-column grid of pain points vs Varmply's solution. The contrast between chaotic DMs and structured campaigns needed to land before any feature details.
All three mockups are code-built — CSS and hardcoded data. The goal was to sell the concept of the experience, not document a shipped interface.
Using real artist names (Ayra Starr, Rema, Davido) instead of placeholder content was a mid-build copy pivot. The product didn't change — the framing did.
Scrolling marquee of creator and sponsor quotes. The auto-scroll signals community activity without requiring the user to interact — important for a cold-start product.
Deep blue with 3D floating brand icons behind a glass card. The blue palette creates instant separation from the green creators page — same product, different world.
Full dashboard UI mockup embedded directly in the landing page. Showing the actual product instead of a screenshot removes doubt about whether the tool exists.
Animated counters and chart previews answer 'but does it work?' before sponsors ask. Numbers are placeholder but the data schema mirrors what will be tracked in production.
Step-by-step escrow flow visualisation. Payment transparency is the primary trust blocker for sponsors — this section addresses it before it becomes an objection.
Deep green with floating balloon shapes — playful energy versus the sponsor page's corporate blue. The hero copy leads with income, not features, because creators care about earnings first.
Three-step flow showing apply → get matched → get paid. The step numbering with connecting lines collapses a multi-week process into something that feels lightweight.
Scrolling reel of creator avatar cards with genre tags. Signals an active community — even pre-launch, showing who else is here reduces the first-mover anxiety for new sign-ups.
GSAP curtain reveal — the footer stays fixed behind the page and reveals as you scroll past the last section. Gives a cinematic close that matches the ambition of the product.
Build decisions
Mar 2025
Switched to real artist names mid-build
Placeholder text ("Creator Name", "Your Song Here") was making the product look like a template. Swapping in Ayra Starr, Rema, and Burna Boy collapsed the cognitive distance — viewers immediately understood the vertical. The product didn't change. The framing did.
Feb 2025
Escrow became the headline, not a feature
Early messaging buried escrow in a bullet list. User interviews surfaced a consistent anxiety: "What if they don't pay?" Moving escrow to the top of the How It Works section made it the structural promise, not a footnote. It positioned Varmply as the neutral party, not just a marketplace.
Feb 2025
Phone mockup added after hero felt abstract
The hero launched with a gradient and marketing copy. It looked like every other SaaS hero. Adding a working phone mockup with actual app UI forced specificity — and made the product legible without reading a word. The mockup isn't decoration; it's the proof-of-concept.
Jan 2025
Dual CTA split by audience from day one
A single "Get started" CTA would have forced a binary: build for creators first or sponsors first. Splitting the hero CTA into "I'm a creator" and "I'm a brand" let both audiences self-select, gave the product a clearer structure, and made onboarding copy easier to write for each path.
Jan 2025
Chose verified metrics over self-reported screenshots
The default in the Nigerian creator economy is screenshots — engagement numbers that could be faked or cherry-picked. Building in automatic metric capture (even mocked in v1) made "verified, not self-reported" a real design constraint, not a tagline. It shaped the analytics screen and the payout flow.