Tealium · Product + frontend
Web Companion
Rebuilding an in-browser data tool from the ground up—and staying hands-on from research through production code.
A useful idea trapped inside fragile technology.
Tealium customers used a bookmarklet called Tag Companion to inspect and configure tracking directly on their websites. The concept was powerful, but the implementation was difficult to trust.
- Its jQuery UI and global CSS collided with customer websites, sometimes making the tool unusable.
- Changes could be written immediately without a review step or meaningful guardrails.
- Authentication was missing, while the interface had little room to absorb the product team’s growing roadmap.
Designing safety, clarity, and scale into the workflow.
I audited how customers and sales engineers used the existing tool, then translated those needs into an experience that could grow without losing the immediacy that made the bookmarklet valuable.
A deliberate save queue
Instead of writing every action immediately, Web Companion collected session changes for review. Users could understand, demonstrate, and confirm what would be sent back to Tealium.
Authentication before submission
I partnered with backend engineering on a new endpoint and designed the login step that protected account changes.
An extensible frontend
I rewrote the experience in modular JavaScript and namespaced the CSS so it could coexist with customer websites. The implementation created room for additional tools and future visual themes.
A startup project with uncommon staying power.
Web Companion became the moment in customer training when people could see their data setup become tangible: create, validate, debug, and understand without leaving the website they were working on.
The latest build remained stable and in broad use for more than six years—a durable result from my first project at Tealium.