Referral

What is it?

“Yulu’s referral system is a strategic growth program designed to drive both user acquisition & engagement. This program aims to increase revenue by expanding the user base through trusted peer recommendation and boost retention by rewarding existing users with incentives that encourages long-term loyalty, ultimately creating a self-sustaining loop of growth & value.”

The challenge

Yulu’s emphasis on Gig Mobility has already led to strong organic word-of-mouth growth. However, we needed a simple yet effective referral program to accelerate acquisition. To achieve this, we aimed to introduce a tiered referral benefits and a competitive leaderboard to increase user engagement, simplify reward tracking and amplify referrals as a key acquisition channel.

The approach

This was a very simple approach and focussed on adopting a universal groundwork, i.e. “Invite a friend ⇝ friend signs up ⇝ you and your friend receive reward” The reward was Yulu Ecash on each successful referral + a bonus Ecash on reaching a tier.

Implementation aimed to scale the referral into a feature that could improve revenue and acquisition.

The solution

Phase 1: A Dashboard

The first focus was on giving users a single view to track their referral growth in one place. We introduced a new “Earnings” dashboard allowing users a space where they can track & re-initiate referrals. This enabled users to monitor both pending & successful referral across the service type (Quick Ride and Rentals) & re-initiate their referral with ease. This also enabled users to nudge friends who hadn’t completed the referral journey.

We simplified and sped up the referral process to make it effortless for users to participate thus driving higher engagement and sharing.

Phase 2: Gamifying

After about 4-5 months of launching “Earnings” — a dashboard which track & re-initiate their referrals. Product had specific requirements to enhance the referrals, the priority was to gamify referrals with 2 features:

1. Boost user engagement by introducing a competitive element with a leaderboard that highlights top referrers.
2. Enhancing user engagement & also increasing the share of referrals by introducing a tiered reward program.
3. Improving visibility and accessibility of the referral program within the app.

The Goals

The process

As a designer, I always stand for simplicity, empathy and experimentation — values that also align with Yulu’s design philosophy. I began by gathering data, running competitive analysis, and formulating hypothesis with potential risks. From there, I moved into iterative design, design critique and finalisation before testing for feasibility, validating with users and handing off the design.

Decisions

There were few good things that each iteration had:

1. A progress bar clearly showing the user’s current tier, adding a sense of achievement.
2. A target subtext that informed users of how much more they needed to unlock the next reward.
3. A hero section featuring the coin, visually reinforcing the idea of earning and attraction.
4. A focus on e-Cash bonuses, which played a key role in grabbing attention and driving motivation.

Final Design

The impact

We expected the gamification of referral to improve the qualitative aspect of user experience. After all, not everything needs metrics for validation. But good design must also result in some improvement in business outcomes.

We were pleasantly surprised by what we found.

Conclusion

The Referral design couldn’t have been possible without the diverse set of stakeholders, front-end engineers, backend engineers, QA engineers, product managers.

We couldn’t be happier with the result, and hope you reach Gold tier in life too.