When working on an investment app, we faced the need to boost users’ activity: to increase account opening rates and activate trading. So we introduced the “Virtual Share” reward.

I participated in designing the flow from the very beginning, working in close collaboration with our designer, product manager, engineering team, as well as legal and compliance departments.

A flow of receiving a “virtual share” was like that: if a user successfully completed all required steps to open a brokerage account in less than 24 hours, they got one “virtual share.”

Here’s how unboxing looked. Once a user tapped the box, the festive animation followed. It sparked even more joy into this already joyful experience.

It was chosen randomly and its value could be up to $100 (most frequently, between $30 and $50). It was shown in their portfolio alongside other financial instruments and cash.

Here’s how a user’s portfolio might have looked if they had received a new reward and hadn't unboxed it yet:

The “virtual share” is not a security but an amount of money reflecting the daily closing market price of the actual share (which meant there were some intricacies in the redemption process).

For example, the reward could be redeemed only during the regular trading session and only via a market order (not, say, a stop or limit order).

To redeem the reward, a user had to build a portfolio with a total financial instruments' value of $300 or more (excluding cash) and maintain this value for 30 days.

Once a user had fulfilled that condition, they could redeem the reward within a two-month window. If they didn’t do it, the “share” expired and was no longer available.

Here’s how a user’s portfolio might have looked if the reward was about to expire:

At the design stage, among other things, I suggested adding progress bars and hints explaining different peculiarities of the “virtual shares” in more detail, including specific examples.

For instance, here’s the bottom sheet explaining how the portfolio value is calculated. I assumed that users having cash in their portfolio would be confused if they see different amounts in their portfolio and on the progress bar.

The wording was a separate issue. Here are some of the restrictions I had to take into account:

• Our compliance officers prohibited use of the word “share,” as it might be considered misleading (technically and legally, we gave users a definite amount of money, not a share)
• The business insisted on avoiding the word “virtual” as it could “create an impression of scam or forgery”
• The wording had to be consistent with the existing microcopy and new flows had to be seamlessly built into the existing experience (e.g. into the flow of buying or selling shares or into the transaction history)
• Conditions of rewards redemption, with all those portfolio value requirements, were quite tricky and needed to be explained in a super clear and concise way — otherwise, the whole idea of the reward might have been perceived as a scam
• The idea that the reward might be anything up to $100, not $100 exactly, needed to be conveyed explicitly, precisely, and unequivocally — otherwise, it might have resulted in support team overload, negativity, and reputation risks

Here’s the screen explaining how to redeem a reward. And here’s a draft of Terms & Conditions containing nearly same info:

The feature’s release boosted account opening rate by double digits. Yet there is room for improvement. I collaborated with the support team to take a deeper dive into users’ problems and frustrations (e.g. expecting more worthy stocks) to fine-tune our UI copy.