Problem: Refersion is a SaaS product, allowing merchants to recruit, manage, and pay affiliates that help them sell their products. Although Affiliate and Influencer marketing are becoming more well understood, getting a successful program up and running is still no easy task.
Goal: I collaborated with the COO and CEO to define my first Refersion project goal, which was to “figure out the ideal simple flow, so a merchant can come in, get started, sign-up affiliates, understand if they’re real people, and then pay them out after they generate sales.” But later, after a several-year relationship with this quickly-scaling unicorn company, my goal became setting the organization up for success in all things Design and UX related.
Contribution: Initially, I was a subcontractor on this account, thought Heatwaves., before Refersion and Heatwaves asked me to take on the entire account independently. (Heatwaves got very busy and Refersion asked to work with me exclusively). Next Refersion asked me to come on board officially as an employee, which I did, helping them to scale, hire and establish their Design practice, Design Ops, and internal Design System.
Here are some details about the very first project, which began this four-year relationship.
In order to to “figure out the ideal simple flow, so a merchant can come in, get started, sign-up affiliates, understand if they’re real people, and then pay them out after they generate sales” we took a “time & materials” approach in the SOW, avoiding a messier template-focused approach. The goal was simply to make as much progress as possible in a few specific areas: Onboarding, Management, and Payment, over the course of seven one-week sprints, working within a locked budget.
Requirements gathering: The two requirements-gathering sprints focused on analyzing the current state and conducting phone interviews with their existing users.
Interaction design: The ID sprints focused on: Improving the onboarding from a 14 step process to an 8 step process; Creating three powerful templates (List, Detail, Overlay) to cover all of 20+ management views. Wireframes are shown below. (In addition, there were some other enhancements not pictured – affiliate sign-up; payment flow; new navigation.)
Results: Our initial project work exceeds expectations, building strong trust with the client. The project was user-tested, and then deployed. Fast forward several years: I was was asked to join Refersion; I help establish their Design practice, Design Ops, and Design System; Refersion was acquired; Refersion’s parent company reaches a 1BN dollar valuations; Reversion’s MoM revenue continues to climb!