Overview
Almost 50% of the company’s new customers come through referrals, and referral acquisition costs are significantly lower than traditional marketing campaigns.
However, the existing referral page presented in the customer’s dashboard lacked clarity and transparency, leading to frequent support inquiries about missing payments, unclear bonus details, and difficulty accessing core information.
Discovery
Several key insight themes emerged from reviewing support tickets:
- Statistics were prominent but lacked context: users could see totals, but they didn’t have access to a detailed statement on these earnings.
- Referral rules were hard to find: buried under multiple clicks, resulting in many tickets around eligibility rules, referral codes, and payout timing.
- Sharing features weren’t optimized: the contact list with invitation actions didn’t match the current market standards for other platforms, and has been impacted due to recent email regulations. The invitations
By reviewing the platform, I also found the following issues:
- System status: no evidence that a referral code was applied during the customer journey
- Not clear SMS messages: the language didn’t promote the brand, nor helped new customers to understand the purpose of the message
- UI problems
- Large tables generated horizontal scrolling
- Hover behaviors for desktop view were not updated for mobile users
- Too much vertical scrolling
I complemented the discovery with a benchmark analysis of a few known referral programs, which revealed the following opportunities:
- Improve the quality of the shared links by adding context and logo
- Offer main messaging apps in the sharing options
- Offer advantages for new customers
- Create a personalized landing page for each invitation
- Create a wallet for the accrual of referral earnings
Solution
To address these discovery findings, the redesigned referral experience focused on the following improvements:
1. Clarify Earnings & Expectations
- Added expected bonus amounts to the bonus progression bar.
- Presented detailed earning statements showing referral names, earning dates, and payout status. – Feasibility aligned with IT.
2. Improve Program Transparency
- Created an easy-to-find FAQ covering eligibility, payout timing, and common questions.
- Made program rules visible directly on the dashboard.
3. Better Sharing Experience
- Replaced native contact list feature with direct sharing via messaging apps (WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook).
- Enhanced referral links with contextual messaging and branding to clearly communicate purpose.
4. In-Flow Reinforcement
Added a visual cue to the customer journey confirming that a referral code was applied.
Metrics
These are the key indicators to monitor once the solution is live:
- Support tickets related to referral payouts
- Tickets opened to confirm the referral code application
- Visibility or discovery of referral information within the main app flow
- Increase in referral-based applications