Rethinking Loyalty
Redesigning a Rewards Program
Background
This project was undertaken during my time at Fractal Ink. We were tasked with redesigning the loyalty program for one of India’s largest private sector banks.
Duration: 7 months
Team/Role
Our team comprised of 3 UX Designers and 3 UI Designers. The UX team performed market and trend analysis, sketching, wireframing and prototyping and internal user testing.
The specifics of the project are protected under a non-disclosure agreement. This piece focuses on how we approached the problem and what I gained from this experience.
Process Followed
Existing Platform
The existing platform was a website that allowed customers to redeem their loyalty points against various items in the Bank’s product catalogue. The portal allowed e-commerce like transactions while also highlighting existing offers with their partner brands.
Design Review
The main areas that needed improvement were:
- Business first approach
Most communication was focused on business and not the user. - Depth and Width undefined
Choice of items to display on the homepage should reflect the diversity and strength of the loyalty program, which currently it fails to convey. - Navigation Structure
The navigation is built to assist the organization to maintain demarcations between different types of tie-ups and reward usage methods.
It’s not clear to the user where he/she needs to look to find a certain reward. - No personalization
There is no correlation between past redemptions and curated rewards.
New Goals
Analysis of the current product revealed areas where the customer experience could be greatly improved. We decided that the new platform should aim to focus on the following aspects:
Delivering a combined experience across online and offline shopping
Generating more consumer data within the brand that might allow us to deliver personally crafted experiences to the users
Give users a reason to come back to the platform
Problems uncovered during User Testing
When the initial prototypes were tested with the users, they were not very comfortable with the idea of the bank selling products.
“Will I be able to return the product? If not, I would rather buy it through Amazon”
“This is another app like Amazon and Flipkart that sells products. But I don’t think it will be cheaper than Amazon”
“I will not use very often, not my regular shopping app because I’m not sure if best deals, variety, and if all products are available.”
“Not sure if I will buy really expensive things from here. Coz I think I’ll get really best discounts from Flipkart or Amazon”
Overcoming Customer Bias
We realized that customers were not confident about buying products from a bank when alternatives like Amazon and Flipkart existed.
To tackle this, we leveraged our affiliate partnerships with these brands. Instead of positioning the Bank as the seller of the product, we showcased the logos of these brands upfront on the homepage as well as on the product detail pages. Since the customers already trust these brands, this helped to establish trust, recognition and familiarity with the new platform.
Leveraging Consumer Behaviors
Since the breadth of the platform’s offering was massive, we needed to find a way to allow customers to systematically discover features that align with their mental model of redeeming and earning reward points.
Our ultimate goal was to increase user spending through this platform. We categorized spends into two types:
Essential Expenses: These expenses include utilities such as mobile bills, broadband, groceries and so on. These are basically ‘needs’ or spending that doesn’t require a trigger. The best way for the bank to encourage their customers to spend for essentials on the platform was through the proposition that they could earn reward points for spending that money through the bank’s platform instead of spending it elsewhere.
Discretionary Expenses: Also known as ‘non-essential’ spending. Categories such as personal grooming, clothing, instant vouchers, movie tickets, food coupons and so on, could fall under this umbrella. Such spending can be usually be encouraged by offering discounts. Here, the bank can use their proposition of allowing the user to redeem his/her accrued points and make a purchase.
Learnings
I worked on this project for over 7 months. Over this time, I got to play an active role in coordination between the UX and UI teams. I was also responsible for most client interactions and keeping track of evolving client requirements.
Here are some things I learnt:
- Being able to defend my designs in front of clients
- Flexibility; being open to evolving client needs
- Helping clients quickly brainstorm through various ideas
- Never losing sight of the bigger picture and the experience we strive to deliver
