Traderstools
Overview
Increased new user sign-ups by 24% by designing Traderstools’ referral system, a gamified and transparent growth loop that leveraged peer trust to drive adoption.
Approach
Researched referral best practices and analyzed competitor programs to define success metrics.
Surveyed traders and conducted interviews to understand motivations for sharing tools.
Ran usability tests with traders to uncover friction and refined navigation for easier access.
Collaborated with engineers to ensure seamless integration and accurate reward tracking.
The challenge
Traderstools, a productivity app for traders, needed to accelerate early adoption and leverage peer recommendations to gain organic visibility. A thoughtfully designed referral system aimed to harness word-of-mouth, drive adoption, and strengthen brand trust.
Among the challenges faced by the company:
Low brand awareness: As a new market player, Traderstools lacked visibility and recognition.
High acquisition costs: Traditional channels, such as ads and content marketing, were expensive and generated limited trust.
Need for viral growth: With limited resources, growth needed to be efficient and scalable. Referral programs offered the potential for compounding, trust-based expansion.
Background
My process
Research & benchmarking
Analyzed existing referral programs in fintech and productivity apps to identify best practices.
Surveyed traders to understand motivations for sharing tools.
Conducted follow-up interviews to explore preferred reward types and engagement mechanics.
Define
Identified most motivating rewards and gamified progress indicators:
Ideate
Mapped user flows and created sketches, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototypes.
Defined core features:
Quick referral link/code generation
Seamless sharing via messaging and social platforms
Gamified progress dashboard with reward tracking
Final designs
Something here blah blah
Impact
👉 24% of all new sign-ups came through referrals (just shy of the 30% goal for six months).
👉 Referral-driven users converted to paid plans 18% more often than non-referred users.
👉 Users who referred at least once logged in 2.3x more frequently than those who never used the feature.
Learnings
Simplicity wins: Users responded best to clear progress indicators (e.g., “2 more referrals until 1 free month”) rather than abstract reward descriptions.
Rewards matter: A/B tests revealed subscription credit outperformed cash rewards by 12% in encouraging referrals.
Future opportunities: We plan to integrate tiered rewards (badges, premium features) and run experiments on incentivizing referrers to invite small trading groups rather than just individuals.