PRODUCT DESIGN | SUMMER 2023
FRICH Influencer-featured question
In-app influencer-featured question to drive user growth.
MY ROLE
Product Strategy
Product Management
User Experience
Usability Testing
TEAM MEMBERS
Annabel Smit (Growth)
Abdullah Tariq (Developer)
Simona Kalachov (Marketing)
Chengyu Zhao (Design)
TIMELINE
6 weeks
METHODS
Desktop Research
XFN Collaboration
Frich is a social finance app that encourages users to answer a series of pre-defined questions about their financial status/behavior via rewards, and based on their responses, generate a personalized product recommendation.
To increase daily active users, Frich rolls out trendy questions on a daily basis to attract user engagement.
Background
problem
Frich needs a cost-efficient way to drive growth.
The company was stuck on user growth, and has limited budget to support large scale reward system. Thus, we need a cost-efficient way to drive growth.
solution
A influencer-featured question template to support influencer collab in the app.
Create a design solution to partner with influencers to drive more similar audiences to Frich. Same prize, but more impact.
How it worksFrich x Influencer give away a $50 gift card every week.
The users enter the raffle by completing the featured-question in the app.
The influencer will post the event on their social media to bring their followers to Frich.
Contributions
I identified a viable project opportunity and worked hard to secure buy-in for it.
Throughout this project, I proposed and led the entire project advancement process. This journey involved taking a new initiative, validating it through research findings, obtaining buy-in from higher management, creating the designs, collaborating with XFN teams to align on the final design, and running pilot tests & measuring the results.
FYIUnlike previous case studies, for this project, I will narrate how I obtained buy-in and ultimately executed the final deliverables.
The story
The user profiles of Frich and many influencers shares striking similarities.
Based on our data analysis, it is evident that Frich's user profiles closely align with those of influencers we have collaborated with. Both segments predominantly consist of young college students who exhibit a high engagement rate with the accounts they follow.
new initiativeI come up with the idea of partnering with influencers to drive more similar audiences to Frich.
Obtain buy-in
Understand the needs, challenges, and opportunities involved.
In order to secure buy-in from the stakeholders, I conducted comprehensive research across the entire project landscape. This encompassed a thorough exploration of user and influencer needs. Furthermore, I undertook a preliminary design phase for the product's scope and architecture. Lastly, I projected the value and the final goal of the entire project.
The needs
Micro/Nano-influencers look for partnerships that encourage engagement with their followers
I conducted individual meetings with both our marketing and growth teams to facilitate a comprehensive exchange of insights pertaining to their past experiences working with micro/nano-influencers. Thanks to their helpful inputs, I managed to gather a wealth of fresh and exciting findings.
To translate our findings into meaningful insights, I led a workshop sorting and grouping the findings using affinity mapping.
Preliminary concept
support influencer collab/cross promo in the app by featuring influencers in daily questions.
As a designer, I'm accustomed to presenting a product concept visually. So I crafted a conceptual mockup illustrating how we can potentially provide a way for Frich to collaborate with influencers and reach their audience. The concept was to support an in-app raffle, in influencer’s name, to win a $50 gift card.
Goals
reach target demographics, lower acquisition cost, & Drive growth.
This feature will make sense ONLY IF it makes a positive growth impact to the business. Thus, I worked together with the Marketing and Growth teams to align on the project goals:
Reach target demographics
Lower acquisition cost
Drive growth & engagement
next stepI successfully secured buy-in from the stakeholders. The next step is to execute the design.
Design
Help users discover the promo & participate.
During the design phase, I broke the experience into 3 stages and identified design requirements for each stage:
Stage 0 (Awareness) - Influencer & our marketing team prepare post content & signup link.
Stage 1 (Participate) - Onboard users on Frich and guide them to complete raffle participation.
Stage 2 (Progress) - Help users track raffle progress.
Stage 3 (Results) - Inform users on the results.
How to feature an influencerPresent the question as it’s asked by an influencer.
Since it’s a influencer-featured question, so the design must give enough visual emphasis on the featured influencer. I add a bottom-like card that includes influencer’s avatar, name, and social account link to the question page. The card opens a bottom sheet with more details & links to the user’s webpages.
Stage 1Users need to be guided to enter the raffle, without experiencing any learning curve.
Without a doubt, these new users are here for the reward. Therefore, a great onboarding experience should help users directly enter a draw without learning anything else about the app yet.
In order to do that without affecting the experience of our existing users, I decided to add a bottom sheet that takes users directly to the question that they need to answer.
Stage 2Ensuring that the entire process of the drawing is traceable enhances credibility for new signups.
As I learned from our past giveaway events, once an entry has been made, users will be eager to know the progress of an ongoing event. Thus, the progress of their participations must be available to help them stay confident with the app that they just sign up for.
During the design process, I encountered many issues with the placement of a raffle entry. The progress should be easily discoverable and requires minimum development efforts as possible. I ended up adding a drawing progress card to the perks page (refer to version 3 in the graph below).
Stage 3Notify users when the result comes out.
In this stage, there are two jobs needed to be done:
1) Notify the users when the results come out.
2) Encourage users to participate in the new Featured Question.
And we faced a new challenge here debating on how we announce the drawing results to our users. In the initial version, we tried to announce the drawing result in the bottom sheet and use a snack bar to take users to the new featured question (this is necessary because the default page when users open the app is today’s question, which might not be the new Featured Question).
DEcisionHowever, during our initial feedback from design review, the major concern was that the design emphasizes too much on user’s failure, which potentially demotivate them to engage. Therefore, we decided to emphasize on announcing the new available question in bottom sheet and quietly inform users on the results.
Pilot test
Check design’s effectiveness with real influencers.
Since none of us can confidently predict if the featured-question will be effective in increasing user growth & reducing acquisition cost, we need to scout an influencer to run a pilot test prior to initiating a full public launch. I worked closely with the marketing team to define the influencer criteria including follower count, engagement rate, and demographics. To make sure the test runs smoothly, I list out and collect all required info from the influencer including their avatar in required specs, featured question, personal bio, and links to their profiles
ResultsWe observed a great growth rate (growth rate increased by 120% for 7 days). Cost/user decreased by 63% for 7 days. The team is happy with the result and is confident with a bigger product launch and bigger influencer collaboration initiative.
Final thoughts
I had the opportunity to take the lead on a project, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out
This was the first time that I took a new initiative from the scratch on my own. I was very lucky to have a talented & humble team supporting me along the whole journey. It was very fun to think through everything and devote a whole lot of efforts to convince the team going with my idea. The final results was overall positive, which putted a great final touch to this journey. But the low retention rate also indicates that the app still needs more efforts to keep users’ interest.