Prizeout, a Fintech/Adtech company, created products for the sports gambling industry. Their core offering was a B2C mobile web app that allowed users of gambling apps to instantly receive winnings as gift cards to popular retailers, rather than waiting days for bank transfers. Retailers could leverage Prizeout's B2B desktop portal to run ad campaigns, presenting users with targeted gift card promotions within the app.
As Prizeout's 5th employee and sole designer, I led the end-to-end design of their B2C gift card web app, the B2B portal for retailer ad campaigns, marketing assets, website, and full brand identity including logo and wordmark.
After designing Prizeout's brand, along with the B2B and B2C web apps, we raised $30M in funding and attracted over 10 brands in 30 days. Today over 1,300 brands use Prizeout.
My goals in the branding process were to:
· Establish the brand color, and
· Create the brand logo and wordmark
I conducted online research to identify competitors in the same space. While no one was offering an identical service, there were three websites – GiftCardGranny.com, e-gifter.com, and GiftCards.com – that had similar offerings as gift card retailers. Although no noticeable trends were observed in terms of color choices, this research provided a starting point for considering user interface layouts for the new offering.
The next step was to consider color psychology and the emotions the product should evoke in customers. Blue immediately came to mind. Users would be entrusting their money with Prizeout and would have the expectation of receiving a gift card in return. Trust and credibility were crucial factors, which aligned with the color blue's widespread use in the banking industry by companies like Chase, Barclays, and PayPal. Since Prizeout also had a banking component, blue seemed like a fitting color choice for the brand. Additionally, the competitor e-gifter also utilized the color blue, reinforcing its suitability for the product.
Next, I considered shapes for the logo and wordmark. After reviewing images of gifts featuring ribbons, I elected to use the shape of a ribbon's tip as a design element; you can see this feature on the top left of the Prizeout 'P'.
The goal was to create the mobile web app where users cash out their winnings in exchange for gift cards. Designing this app would be helpful in securing funding from investors and encouraging retailers to join the ecosystem.
To make sure that I understood the team's vision of the product, I quickly created a task flow of the checkout process which I reviewed with the Product Manager.
I conducted a competitor analysis by visiting egifter.com, giftcards.com and giftcardgranny.com to get an understanding of how they display gift cards on their products. This led to different design iterations when creating wireframes.
I crafted wireframes for the web app and conducted collaborative reviews with my team. These sessions helped streamline our vision and the UI. For example, we concluded that filters, albeit present in the initial wireframes, should be omitted for two strategic reasons.
Firstly, their removal enabled monetization opportunities through controlled gift card placements on the screen. Secondly, leveraging traditional targeted advertising techniques would help us determine the gift cards most aligned with each user's preferences, thereby allowing prioritized display of these offerings at the top of the search results - this would make filters superfluous.
After finalizing the wireframes, I created the final mockups. Once the mockups were complete, I created design specs using Adobe XD.
The second product was an ad campaign creation and management tool that enabled retailers to log in and create ad campaigns experienced by users in the form of gift cards.
This campaign management tool allowed retailers to control all the typical aspects of an ad campaign, such as targeting, budgeting, and creative assets, while also providing real-time monitoring and performance analytics for their active campaigns. My focus was building this product.
I met with my cross-functional team including a salesperson, product manager, engineer, technical lead, COO, and a connection of the CEO's who had 10 years of experience in the advertising industry. Our research into the industry helped us identify the core user needs to focus on for our MVP:
· Targeting Audiences
· View/Manage Campaigns
· Track Campaign Performance
· Track account Performance
After understanding the user needs and the product's goals, I created a user flow that mapped the user's journey through our product. This ensured that every user need was accounted for in the product design.
While the team initially planned to create a product like Facebook Ad Manager, I expanded my analysis to include ZoHo Books and Google Analytics as well. This comprehensive analysis provided insights into how competitors and companies offering similar advertising solutions structured their user interfaces. Examining these platforms helped inform the design approach for our product and ensure we addressed common needs and conventions within the advertising space.
After gaining insights from the competitor analysis, I initiated the wireframing process for the campaign management and creation tool. These wireframes were then reviewed with the cross-functional team to ensure alignment across all stakeholders. The collaborative review sessions allowed for valuable feedback and ensured that the proposed user flows and interface designs effectively addressed the identified user needs and product requirements.
After going through many revisions, I settled on a final design for the portal, shown below.
This project was very successful. Using a slide deck that I created, our team presented my prototypes to investors to get $30M in funding. After partnering with our developers to launch our products, we were able to sign on over 10 retailers to Prizeout in the first 30 days of launch.