Overview
In order to acquire new Hodoo English users we decided to build a referral program. Since Hodoo English is an educational product it will be more effective to learn about it from someone they already know. This program is targeted for Korean parents who have kids aged between 7 to 12.
Goals
Product goal: Acquire new users by incentivize world of mouse recommendation from our existing users.
User goal: Create experience that optimize both referring and referred users to make the high-perfuming referral program.
Our approach
There are 4 important factors to create a successful referral program.
Intent to share: Would our existing user refer Hodoo English to their friends?
Discovery: How the existing users find the referral program?
Sharing: How can we make it easy to refer?
On-boarding: How can we acquire the referred users successfully?
To get it right we decided launch a simple and minimal referral program first before building the full referral system. After leaching the first version we are keep tracking the users’s behavior and conduct user surveys and research.
Research
User Survey
After we launched V1 our team started tracking the google analytics and found that 45% of users who landed on the referral page clicked to share during the first month. This were very good results but we would like to know more about why some users who have a chance to share decided not to. We selected those users and conducted a survey.
Key Takeaways
Our users are not very active on social networks and especially many of them don’t have a Facebook account.
Since Hodoo English is an educational product, our users prefer to share it with targeted friends by talking in person or sending them a direct message rather than posting on Facebook for a broad audience.
Some users would like to take time to try the product before refer to their friends.
The referral bonus (1 free month) resonates with our users.
User Interview
To test the V2 concept we recruit 2 parents who are active users to test the referral flows and 2 other parents who don’t know about Hodoo English to test the invited friend flows. I created the interview guide and prototype and with help from our project manager in Korea I was able to conduct the interviews through Google Hangouts.
Key Takeaways for Referrers:
It’s important the referral page is simple and easy to understand. Since our target users are not very tech savvy, they are afraid if the UI looks complicated or has a lot of text. In addition, users would like to see and overview of the steps they need to take in order to refer someone.
Providing a combination of immediate incentives to encourage a first action and continued incentives to keep referring friends works well.
It would be useful to provide some tracking UI to see the referral status. Our users not only would like to track their reward but also would love to know if their friends kids start playing Hodoo English to talk about their impressions and opinions.
Takeaways for Invited Friends:
It’s important to let them know we provide a free trial. Parents believe all kids are different so even if they heard good reviews from their friends they would like their kids to try it out first.
It’s also important to indicate the referrer’s name when they sign up or come to our website to help them be sure they are in the right flow.
Final Design & Solutions
Based on the data and key findings from the survey and interview, I started designing the flows and UI. What the V2 program offers is that when an invited friend purchases Hodoo English, both the referring and invited users will get a bonus month of subscription. We provide a unique invite link for each user so friends can sign up from the link or alternatively they can enter their parent ID when they sign up on the Hodoo English website.
