Bitnob is a Bitcoin-backed financial payment company that enables seamless Bitcoin-backed financial transactions across Africa and beyond. The Bitnob app helps users in Africa and worldwide transact and invest in Bitcoin for as low as $1. This project explores how we transformed the referral program to drive user acquisition and engagement on the Bitnob app.

At the launch of the Bitnob mobile app, the referral feature had a very low conversion rate with little to no excitement from customers to refer people to the app.

While the initial referral feature struggled with engagement, this challenge presented an opportunity for us to reimagine how we could motivate our users while staying true to our Bitcoin-first approach.

Brainstorming with other stakeholders on how to increase Bitnob's user base by getting customers to not just refer, but also gain for each person referred.

We settled with customers being rewarded with satoshi for each person who uses their unique referral link/code, and the gained satoshi can then be withdrawn into their Bitcoin wallet.

After defining our reward structure, we sorted out how to create an engaging user experience that would transform referrals from a simple transaction into an exciting journey.

Thinking about how to make it even more fun and competitive, we resulted in introducing a leaderboard that shows real-time ranking of customers based on their acquired points from their referrals.

After the initial implementations of the design, I had an internal launch to test closely with selected users.

The feedback I got highlighted the leaderboard's unclear design, prompting me to:

Introduce clear customer categorization.

Design for real-time position updates.

Enhance the visual hierarchy for better understanding.

These user-driven improvements boosted the program's performance which we noticed in the first few months of launching the referral program, we noticed:

We had a 47% increase in referral conversion rate within the first three months.

Over 2.5x increase in organic user acquisition through referrals.

While working on this project, I realized that financial incentives alone aren't enough; and that gamification can significantly enhance user engagement, and regular user feedback and willingness to iterate are crucial for feature optimization.