My Role
As a Product Designer responsible for the Product Growth team, my role was to drive key metrics such as Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue.
In this project, I developed an Opportunity tree and monitored the metrics after delivery.
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To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I omitted confidential information and adjusted the numbers presented in this case.
Context
Cora is a digital bank with a focus in SMB's (small business).
It initially offered basic services such as transfers, payments, invoice issuance, and PJ Pix. I joined Cora in 2021 during the expansion of products into the credit line, where I delivered the credit card application flow and participated in the rollout to the entire customer base in 2022.
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With the launch of the new product through paid media, we saw a surge in the Acquisition rate. However, we noticed a decline in the Activation and Retention rates month after month. The credit card was only available to SCR clean companies, which represented a small percentage of the customer base.
Problem
With the launch of the credit card, we observed a decrease in the Activation rate, which subsequently had a negative impact on Retention
as well.
People were creating accounts solely for the credit card, and unlike other launches where the other rates would increase, we were not showcasing the value of Cora as a complete business account.
Discovery - Phase 1
After conducting rapid experiments and not seeing an impact on these metrics, it was necessary to understand new opportunities. The first phase consisted of taking internal data and previously mapped ideas, placing them in an Opportunity Tree to understand which ones were within the scope of the team.
Steps:
Opportunity tree
Discovery - Phase 2
We discussed the ideas that arose from the tree, and it made sense to study what major American players do, called Build your Credit. Phase 2 was focused on understanding how to apply these techniques here
in Brazil.
Steps:
Benchmarking on Build your Credit
The "Build your credit" consists of a series of techniques that major American companies commonly use to grant credit.
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They consist of transactional missions (gamified flow) that people need to fulfill in order to improve or establish their credit score.
In-depth Interview
As this type of gamification is not common in Brazil, I conducted in-depth interviews to understand customers perception of completing transactional missions to obtain the credit card.
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I also sought to understand the target audience interested in this type of action and their usage needs, considering the values to offer.
Quantitative Research
I analyzed Usage x Company Size data and cross-referenced it with the credit limits requested by companies in the card flow. Based on this, I segmented a target audience that we could serve and sent a quantitative survey to understand the potential adoption.
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70%
of respondents
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said they would very likely participate in this initiative, while only 8% said it was unlikely to participate
want the bank to say which steps they should take to build their credit limit, while 28% want other criteria to be analyzed.
71%
of respondents
​
Prefer to wait for a new analysis.
8%
of respondents
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Define
I presented the Discovery data to the CPO, Credit, Marketing, and Legal teams, proposing to apply gamification techniques and score building as a way to balance Cora's revenue by granting a small credit amount to a target audience we could serve. This approach would have a positive impact on Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral. Additionally, the proposal would help make the credit engine more flexible.
Persona
Pedro, 43 years old - São Paulo/Brazil
Self-employed enterpreneur
Offers Legal services
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Saw the number of clients decrease drastically during the pandemic because he had to stop face-to-face service and was not yet accustomed to digital services, causing him to fall behind on some bills. Now that he has been able to pay what he needed to, he needs a credit limit to invest in Digital Marketing
It would be possible to serve an audience that needed a lower credit value.
Purpose
With the results and target audience defined, I presented the purpose of what we wanted to test in a forum with various teams at Cora.
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I used the Golden circle, a method proposed by Simon Sinek to display the purpose.
Definition - Revenue
The Benchmark was used to understand actions that other companies were using and that could be applied to Cora. Due to the difference in product offerings, we had the idea of using the CAC value as a mission.
Ideate
After defining the types of revenue we could adopt, we did some internal calculations and defined some initial missions. Then, I facilitated an ideation workshop with the squad and people from other teams.
Brainstorming session with the 7 people from the team (Developers, Tech Lead, PM, and Data Analyst) to generate ideas together.
High-fidelity Prototype and Usability test
After the brainstorming, I gathered the ideas and designed a high-fidelity prototype. I took this prototype for usability testing.
took the usability test sent through Maze.
12
users
​
were made to the prototype after the test.
3
adjustments
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Technical refinement
After making adjustments based on Usability testing,
I participated in the refinement process with the Mobile and Backend teams to define the MVP. We applied the concept of Backend-driven UI, a suggestion I brought from my experience at PicPay, which could speed up the test. We divided the Delivery into two sprints (one month).
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Refinement sessions were made using Miro, since it was a remote team.
Development and Launch
As the team has a strong bias towards experimentation, even if a well-crafted Discovery is made, all feature releases are done through A/B testing or launch to only a small percentage of the base, using feature flags.
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We launched the MVP via A/B testing to a base of ~20 thousand people. 10 thousand people had the feature release and 10 thousand didn't.
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We observed the transactional behavior of these people for 3 weeks were those who had the missions generating more revenue?
MVP explained
Credit limit highlighted to capture interest
We highlighted the rules and limit at the beginning of the screen as they are the most relevant information for the user, as observed in the usability test.
Missions to complete
We informed all the rules that need to be followed to complete the mission and also added a Deeplink so that the user could go directly to the flow that makes it possible to complete it.
Progress tracking
As a good practice of Nielsen's visibility of system status heuristics, we observed in the usability test that the progress bar was important for the user to know how much was left for them to earn the credit. This technique also makes the experience more gamified.
Completed missions
As a reinforcement of progress and to help the user focus on what still needed to be completed, we worked with colors and added a tag informing that the mission was completed.
A/B Testing results
We let the test run for 3 weeks to have statistically significant results.
40%
more transactions
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in the participant group
10%
more activation
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in the participating group
50%
CAC reduction
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From the accounts that were created as a result of a mission that consisted of referring people.