horsesales.ie case study — Ryan Mahato, Product Manager

1 The problem

A marketplace only works when buyers find the right horse and sellers find the right buyer. I first worked on building and marketing horsesales.ie, then took over full ownership of the business. Now every decision, from what to build next to where the traffic comes from, is mine to get right.

2 What I learned about users

Analytics on behaviour, traffic sources and sales show me what buyers and sellers are actually looking for, which is often different from what a form or a filter assumes.
The words people search with reveal intent. Matching content to those words brings in people who are ready to act.
AI search and assistants such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity have become a fast-growing source of visitors, and they reward clear, well-structured content.
Market and search trends move early. Watching them lets me position the site before a change becomes obvious.

3 What I built or changed

Run the business end to end: product direction, development, marketing, growth and revenue.
Prioritise, design and build new functionality myself, then measure whether each change improved engagement, satisfaction and sales.
Grow organic traffic through SEO, rankings and content written for what people search for.
Run paid advertising with ads shaped around user behaviour.
Optimise content and site structure so the site is found and recommended by AI search and assistants.
Use AI-powered analysis and pattern recognition on behaviour, search terms, listings and sales data to decide what to build or change next.

4 The result

A marketplace that evolves from evidence. Traffic comes from organic search, paid campaigns and AI assistants, and every change is judged by what it does for engagement, satisfaction and sales.

Product ownership
SEO
AI search (GEO/AEO)
Paid ads
Google Analytics
AI analysis
Full-stack development