TAMARA SMART • FINTECH / LOYALTY • 2024
Tamara Smart membership program
Overview
How should we reward loyal Tamara users?
Tamara Smart is Tamara's first membership program, created to enhance the repayment experience through exclusive benefits and greater financial flexibility. Working in collaboration with a Senior Product Designer and a UX Researcher, we designed a program that achieved a 10% adoption rate within its first two months.
Product strategy
Understanding how the membership program fits into Tamara's offering and drives new revenue.
User Research
Conducting 20 in-depth interviews to understand user pain points and validate solutions.
Iterative Design
Rapidly prototyping and testing concepts, learning from missteps along the way.
Results
↑ 10%
Adoption in first 2 months
↑ $1.6 million
In estimated recurring revenue
↑ 40k members
Post beta 40K smart users
Problem
Loyal users felt unrewarded and anxious about managing payments.
Loyal Tamara users felt they deserved exclusive benefits to acknowledge their continued engagement. Tracking multiple payment dates caused ongoing anxiety and a negative emotional association with Tamara. Users also had no protection when merchants failed to deliver. Without addressing these, Tamara risked losing its most engaged customers.
"Why can't we allow users to manually do this? They usually call us and it takes a lot of time."
Customer Agent
Research
We conducted 20 in-depth user interviews to uncover the real pain points.
To understand how a membership program could be beneficial for our users, we took a step back and with the help of a UX Researcher conducted 20 in-depth user interviews to understand their current pain points and expectations.
1. Anxiety after using Tamara
After using Tamara, many users felt stressed, constantly keeping track of multiple payments. This led to feelings of anxiety and a negative emotional association with Tamara.
2. Lack of rewards for loyal users
Loyal Tamara users felt they deserved exclusive benefits like discounts, premium support, and rewards to acknowledge their continued engagement.
3. Lack of protection from Tamara
Users expected Tamara to provide protection when ordering from merchants. They wanted assurance that if a merchant scammed them or if their items didn't match the online description, Tamara would step in.
Exploring Solutions
Since memberships were common in the GCC, we took an innovative approach.
In our first iteration, we decided to give users as much flexibility as possible. Instead of paying a fixed amount each month, they could choose from three options for how much they wanted to pay. This gave users more control but introduced complexity.
Iterations
Our early concepts were too complex for users.
In our effort to create a unique membership experience that stands out in the market, we designed an engaging yet novel user flow. While the goal was clear, we faced challenges in balancing innovation with usability.
Despite several iterations, the concept was ultimately too complex. Usability testing confirmed our hypothesis: the steep learning curve of the novel approach negatively impacted the program's usability.
Goals
We focused on three success criteria: intuitive design users grasp instantly, features that solve users' main pain points, and successful user adoption of the MVP program. Each solution was designed to directly address the pain points uncovered in research.
👩🏻💻
Intuitive design users grasp instantly
User goal
Drive membership adoption and revenue
Business goal
📉
Solve users' main pain points
User goal
Reduce delinquency
Business goal
💰
Simple onboarding to new payment flow
User goal
Successful MVP launch and adoption rate
Business goal
Solution
Here are the key features we shipped
1. Rewarding loyal users
Introducing cashback, rewards, and buyer protection for Tamara Smart members, ensuring they feel valued and secure when shopping with Tamara merchants.
2. Monthly Pay Date
Pooling all user payments on the 1st of the month to match salary payments, making tracking easier and less stressful. Members no longer need to remember multiple dates.
3. Simplifying onboarding flows
A simple onboarding flow that highlights payment screen changes for Tamara Smart members, helping users quickly adapt to the new UI.
4. Simplified Opt-In flow
A seamless and intuitive opt-in flow from checkout, making it easy for users to discover Tamara Smart and join the program without friction.
Outcome
Impact after launch!
↑ 10%
Adoption in first 2 months
↑ $1.6 million
In estimated recurring revenue
↑ 40k members
Post beta 40K smart users
After launching the Tamara Smart membership program, it achieved a 10% adoption rate in its first two months. Today, the program is one of Tamara's key revenue drivers.
Reflection
My key takeaways and learnings!
Simplicity wins over novelty
Our early iterations were too complex. Usability testing showed users prefer familiar, intuitive patterns over novel but confusing ones. The simpler we made the flow, the better the adoption.
Research grounds every decision
The 20 user interviews gave us clear direction. Without them, we would have built features users didn't need. Every successful design decision traced back to a real user insight.
