✦ Referral feature on theScore Bet & ESPN Bet
I led research during the development of the new refer-a-friend feature on theScore BET and ESPN BET. It was introduced as a new promotion that incentivized existing users to refer their friends and family for a monetary reward. The feature was shipped in summer 2024.
Type
Discovery & Concept Research
Year
Completed in Feb 2024
Role
UX Researcher
Objective & Problem
The acquisition of new online sportsbook & casino bettors is associated with high costs. Furthermore, potential bettors have an extensive list of options to choose from, making it difficult to decide on which ones to use. Referrals as a feature represented a chance for us to introduce our platform organically and in a more cost-effective manner.
Although referrals has been a well-established way to bring in new customers in many industries, promotions on sportsbooks & casinos can often involve complicated requirements which leads to a poor user understanding and experience. In order to build the right solution, we needed to learn bettors’ expectations of a refer-a-friend feature and test different design concepts.
Research Plan
Referrals is a two-part problem because the user flow for the person referring and the person getting referred is separate.
After completing a competitive analysis of referral flows from the likes of Fanduel and DraftKings, our designer worked on the first iteration of design concepts. I collaborated closely with design and product to determine the research goals.
Referrals research overview
Interview Guide & Initial Designs
My designer and I had an established process that we relied on for many evaluative research projects prior to referrals. In most cases, I would conduct rapid-fire unmoderated tests created on UserZoom within 1-2 weeks to support his designs. However, I felt that there were knowledge gaps and with such complex concepts, I heavily advocated to product for a longer, 3-week timeline in order for me to conduct the research in a moderated setting. This would allow me to pull more thorough insights by asking follow up and probing questions.
As designs were being completed, I crafted an interview guide in parallel that was complimentary to the prototype flows. Here’s the one for referrers.
Interview guide for referrer flow
Referrer flow to be tested
Interview Analysis
As I was tagging transcripts from the interviews, I saved interesting clips that others might explain better. Since some stakeholders were also unable to attend my interviews, I facilitated an analysis workshop for the team to review the video clips I saved.
Analysis workshop
This workshop helps me steer the direction for my analysis, uncovering the questions that are most important to each stakeholder.
For example, in this project, our design manager posed a key question: “Even if the [referral] limit is reached, does this deter users from continuing to share invites?” This would later be directly answered in the final presentation.
Research Insights
In the first part of my interview guide, I wanted to know their prior experiences with referral programs in-and-out of sportsbooks & casinos. I also uncovered the barriers of entry and factors that help patrons decide whether or not to refer their friends and family.
Insights from their past experiences and expectations of a referral program
Concept Test
I annotated the pros and cons of different static design concepts to determine the best option. For flows that I tested, I would discuss the painpoints at each step in the referral funnel. Here were the results for the referrer side of the experience.
Test results for referrer entry concepts
Test results for referrer flow
Test results for In-Progress Tracker and Completed pages
Behavioural Insights
Recall that in the analysis workshop, there were concerns around referral limits and how it would impact user behaviours. As a result, I specifically looked for insights in my analysis that would answer that question.
We found that their interest would be lost once the limit is reached, where every additional referral afterwards would net 0 rewards. Furthermore, we knew that we could omit designing for extreme edge cases where people might refer a large amount of people, since they exhibited restraint and conservativeness when it came to referring friends to gambling platforms.
Behavioural insights that impacted designs
Design Iteration
After the research was presented, I collaborated with design to translate those research insights into design changes.
In this example of the in-progress and completed pages, we had key insights that led to design changes:
Research insight 1
Last step “Reward” was confusing because it felt the same as “Place Bet”. Users have to understand that the bet must settle after placing for it to be rewarded.
Design change 1
We added more information for each step that explained what was required clearly.
Research insight 2
“0 out of 50 Referrals Completed” card was confusing because it felt like a hard cap on referrals and not rewards. This information is also more contextual to the completed page and not the in-progress page.
Design change 2
Limit info is moved over to the completed page and additional context is offered regarding it using an info icon and small blurb.
Research insight 3
In-progress page gets overwhelming with a long list of referrals.
Design change 3
The accordion is introduced as a result to reduce visual load while still surfacing key information.
Changes to the in-progress and completed pages after research
Final Designs of Referrer Flow
Next Steps
The refer-a-friend promo successfully shipped in the summer of 2024. Post-launch, we’ll be closely monitoring its use through our analytics dashboards and from our CX data. This will help determine what we can improve in the next update.