Background
Vivid Seats introduced a cashback structured app rewards program in 2019 with the goals of brand loyalty, customer retention, and growing mobile users. We continuously iterated on it over the next 2 years but as shortcomings became to pile up with long-term engagement, technical limitations, and financial stabilization, we realized the need for a larger shift in the evolution.
As the lead designer on this project, I worked with many members of product, design and leadership in the early phases of this project and then directly owned creating all consumer-facing UI for our web and app products.
Project Goals
Our challenge was to rebuild the loyalty program with a new financial modal while creating a more engaging and visually integrated experience.
More specifically, we aimed to:
- Create a new lump sum rewards mechanic that would be more enticing for users and save money upfront compared to the small and frequent rewards of the original program
- Create a new lump sum rewards mechanic that would be more enticing for users and save money upfront compared to the small and frequent rewards of the original program
- Design more compelling tiers that don't expire so quickly and are more experiential as compared to the current tier structure based on a 1-year spend window and tied to increased cashback percentages
- Reduce Rewards related customer service calls by providing better self-service options, a clear history, and better explanations for how it works.
- Provide a Rewards experience that is visually clear, engaging, and integrated into the shopping experience as compared to heavy and pushy placements throughout the current buyer experience.
The business goals for the new program were to create better long-term engagement and financially stabilize the program while continuing to support previous goals of encouraging app downloads, increasing customer retention, and lifetime customer value.
Redesigned program
Our redesigned program introduced these changes:
- Mechanics were moved to a "Buy 10, Get 10% off", thus pushing a reward to be given after likely several purchases, and allowing for a more substantial reward amount which could amount to a free ticket.
- Tiers were now based on lifetime spend that would reward our long-time customers and introduce experiential benefits at higher tiers.
- We created small engagement/reward opportunities to encourage loyalty between purchases (and large credit rewards)
- The new rollout created a clear visual consistency and language with pulled-back funnel placements and a more integrated experience that combined rewards with the user profile.
- We added a self-service screen in-app to detail current earnings and the history of all related activity as well as a detailed about page that could be easily managed/updated
Program Levels
Before
The new four-tier structure was designed to reward our long-time customers and entice spending with new experiential benefits like extended expirations, surprise upgrades, and customer service priority. We refreshed the tiers with fun new names and assigned distinct colors per tier that started with brand colors and progressed through blues and purples because they carried a ‘regal’ perception. Color-coding throughout the experience can now instantly communicate tier status.
Main Rewards Experience
Before
-Rewards has a prominent placement on home page and while the core experience now lives within the user's profile. Referencing rewards at the top of home instead of in its own module helps integrate the program into the main app experience and let's us use Rewards to prompt sign in. The integration of Rewards into the user profile is a strategic decision to create a personalized feel that is deeply woven with their account.
-The visual hierarchy of the main rewards placements allows users to easily understand the most critical pieces: rewards progress, available rewards credits and rewards level. Credits are prominently shown when available. The progress bar design provides both at-a-glance understanding to progress towards a reward with the overall fill, and detailed tracking with small dots and number callouts. In order to keep the main interface simple and focused, I chose not to overwhelm users with the exact value of the reward in progress. This lets the casual user focus on the essentials of reaching the next reward and creates a curiosity gap for users to dig further into Rewards screens to reach these details.
New Main Placements
Showing various states of home + details
Challenges
To keep users engaged between purchases, and gamify the experience, we introduced 'Challenges'. These range from purchase-related goals like 'Buy tickets to 3 different genres' to engagement tasks like completing your profile or sharing tickets. Each challenge can award either digital badges or bonus stamps, creating multiple paths to rewards that don't always require purchases.
Rewards History
The tickets credit view was drastically evolved into a comprehensive history view. This view details the value and expirations of current stamps and credits. It also clearly outlines any activity that affects earn, burn or expiration with direct links to related orders. This single screen dramatically reduced customer service calls about rewards tracking as it clearly laid out history and current balances.
Rewards Messaging in App Shopping Experience
Before
With scaled-back funnel placements for the initial launch, we integrated a subtle reminder of earn on ticket details, and kept a place to apply credits in checkout. Then post-purchase, we clearly communicate earn and celebrate key moments like level jumps or reaching a reward.
Marketing / Informational
I created a singular page to be used on web to advertise the program as well as pulled into the app as webview to explain mechanics and answer questions. By using one view across web and apps, we could support updated information on the program and provide a place for users to really understand how the program works and be able to deep dive on topics like collecting stamps, reward credit value and tier benefits.
Web Strategy
Initial rollout for our web experience allows users to focus on completing their order and only intercepting after the fact to push users to download the app and start tracking their rewards. Future scope would add more messaging about Rewards earn into web purchase flow for awareness and help push conversions. Our approach allows users to earn Reward credit on web purchases for no additional friction but forces repeat users to move into the app to utilize a reward on a future purchase.
The Process
Identifying Core User Needs
Our discovery started with cross-functional sessions to identify program shortcomings. We went through usage metrics, user surveys, and a handful of interviews to identify target users and their pain points, and start to understand how we could address user needs while achieving business goals. We focused on three user types and how we could move users through the groups: the first time user, the repeat purchaser, and the brand loyalist. Our findings revealed that the current program felt too promotional, the rewards were too small to feel meaningful, maintaining annual tiers didn't feel sustainable, and there was confusion with tracking credits. We needed to give new users access to understand how the program worked while maintaining focus on earn progress in prominent placements to garner excitement. We also were focused on using the program to encourage users to buy more often and buy more expensive tickets.
Ideation Sessions to Shape The Program
I participated in several discovery sessions in groups comprised of product and design members to discuss rewards mechanics and the accompanying visual that would show progress. We also ideated on components, tiers, and terminology. Some of the specifics about the mechanics we contemplated included earning in points, stamps or stubs and being rewarded at a specific value (10% credit), one free ticket, or various rewards with increasing point values.
I used this mapping to identify where we could pull back promotional messaging, where rewards information was truly valuable to users, and how we might create awareness from different entry points.
Refining Ideas Through Testing
A stamp card concept with a free ticket (with a max value) initially emerged as a favorite which led me to create this early prototype. I outlined the new mechanics as a user would experience from sign-up through checkout on the app and gave some light branding as the 'Fanatic Club'.
Initial user testing of our stamp card prototype revealed several key insights that shaped our next iterations:
-We shifted toward a 10% mechanism where the Reward value was set after feedback that multiple currencies for earn and burn felt complicated, confusing, and not transparent.
-We moved away from the literal stamp card, which felt dated in a digital context.
-We also discovered users were skeptical of ‘free ticket' messaging, leading us to adopt more transparent ‘Reward credit' language.
Evolution of the UX
Through multiple iterations, the mechanics and visuals evolved into the Rewards that we released. Our first prototypes were focused on determining the intricacies of mechanics which needed to get final approval from our finance and leadership teams.
In the next rounds, I continued to refine the progress visual and how it would display in a large placement and a condensed header version. The final focus was to determine priority and organization of different information, which views and components to include in the main rewards experience, and how we would create small engagement opportunities. We validated ideas at each stage through user testing sessions with a priority on the experience giving users clarity and trust and helping them feel engaged and excited.
A critical point was testing a version of the mechanics where the stamp value equals the ticket price and then, the Reward was calculated by taking an average, causing the value to fluctuate. Not only was this confusing but when potential Rewards decreased in value, it was a clear demotivator. Our final design values the stamps at 10% of the ticket price so with each purchase, the reward value increases.
I evolved the stamp card through different iterations of progress bars where I was working to create ultimate simplicity while communicating clear progress tracking. This led to an important design decision: simplify the main interface to focus on stamp progress toward 10, while letting users who wanted to track the value do so from the history view. The minimalist approach removes unnecessary elements to let the ‘casual user’ focus on essentials but strategically creates a curiosity gap for users to dig into their Rewards to find exact value. In prioritizing the most important information, I also ended up only showing reward credit if it exists.
Another critical decision that we made at this time was to combine the Rewards details with the user’s profile. This decision was key to achieving our goals of integrating Rewards naturally into the experience. When users think of their presence in our app, we want them to think of their Rewards level and current progress as part of that identity.
For between-purchase engagement, I explored several concepts: a spin wheel, trivia games, and badges. User feedback revealed the spin wheel felt gimmicky, and trivia added unnecessary complexity to get to a stamp. The badges which evolved into Challenges emerged as the most natural fit, offering clear goals that felt integrated with the core experience with the upside of being able to grow to fit future initiatives.
Visual Program Identity
We were in the midst of rolling out a new brand which ultimately informed the visual identity of the loyalty program. We matched Rewards components with our new brand colors and chose colors from the new palette to visually represent each Rewards Level. We wanted the level to be easily identifiable so the respective level color cascaded the Rewards UI.
Working along with our digital designer, I helped to concept logo marks to use with Rewards program that would be cohesive to our new logo and UI. The end result was a logo that worked off our brand logo with geometric shapes, creating a confetti-like mark that exuded ‘excitement’ and ‘rewards’ while representing our tiers with 4 distinct colors. This was the final piece to inform the UI design into a cohesive and scalable system.
Iterative Release Strategy
We had a hard deadline for the initial release of the program so it was pertinent to prioritize only core features for our first release. My 'must-have' list that included main progress tracking on Home, Rewards Details, and Order Confirmation (in app), and credit+stamp details in Rewards History. From there, we prioritized features for iterative releases, layering in features like the addition of a detailed activity feed in Rewards History, combining Rewards Details with User Profile, simplifying the progress bar so that the same component could be used in multiple places, and adding in Challenges concept
Outcomes
Our redesigned loyalty mechanics created a more sustainable program for the business, reducing Rewards business costs by 25% as we paid out less in rewards for small purchases, and first or second time buyers.
We were able to achieve our goal of reducing rewards-related service calls by nearly 40% within months after launch, thanks to the new detailed History, and About views.
Other immediate impacts included:
- A 15% increase in users reaching higher tiers, signifying better retention rates
- Rewards interaction at 1.3x per session (up from .7x previously), signifying increased engagement
- Conversion rate holding steady, signifying Rewards placements are not detracting from buyer journey
- A 15% increase in users reaching higher tiers, signifying better retention rates
- Rewards interaction at 1.3x per session (up from .7x previously), signifying increased engagement
- Conversion rate holding steady, signifying Rewards placements are not detracting from buyer journey
Most importantly, user feedback. showed the program felt both clearer and more valuable, despite its more complex mechanics. User sentiment that "it feels more valuable to earn a free ticket" validated that the new mechanics were enticing for customers to participate in the program on top of them being financially stable for the business.
As we use the program to attract both new and return customers over time, we will continue to monitor acquisition rates, app downloads, conversion rates, and reward credits used as indicators for success.
