Persona 01
Julia · the app owner.
CEO of a travel networking app. Knows CPA from CPC but leans on a developer for the technical work. Early growth has stalled and she needs a rewards program live fast.
Target user
Tech-literate
Time-poor
Appevate
We turned a rewards API only a developer could install into a research-backed product, built so non-technical app owners could launch a program on their own.
MPL Gaming
·
Real-money Platform
·
U.S. Market
At a glance
Research, design, brand, and build.
Drag / scroll →
timeline
5 months
From Research, design, brand, front-end
RESEARCH
14 user
Interviews with Experts and target users
OUTPUT
Web app + site
With a reusable design system
FRONT-END
Vue.js
Handed to their engineers
The Client
A startup turning any app into a rewards platform.
Appevate, built by ShareEdge, helps app owners drive engagement through rewards. App owners integrate its API, define rewards around the actions that matter, a signup, a click, an impression, and pay users in cash when they take them, all from one dashboard.
The pitch was simple: give smaller apps the loyalty engine big platforms build in-house, without the engineering budget. The catch was who had to set it up.
Rewards API
Plus a management dashboard
Rewards-as-a-service
Pay users in cash for actions
Pre-launch
Early-stage, 2020
The Challenge
The product worked. Getting in didn't.
Appevate's early adopters were non-technical app owners, but integrating the API was a developer's job, and research showed the gap early.
Problem 01
Onboarding built for developers.
Getting started meant an API key, a zip, and code. In testing, non-technical owners stalled at once, they were the buyers, but couldn't get Appevate running without pulling in an engineer.
Problem 02
No help choosing a program.
Owners had to choose between CPA, CPC, and CPM with no guidance. They knew their goal, grow, retain, re-engage, but not which program type would get them there.
Problem 03
A dashboard that hid the point.
Users wanted to see campaign goals against real results, not a feed of individual payouts. The existing view buried whether a program was actually working.
Before / After
Same product, rebuilt for the moment of setup.
See how getting started changed, from a zip file and a raw API key that only a developer could handle into a guided, plain-language flow an owner could finish alone.
Before
After WANDR
Our Role
From research to a shipped front-end.
01
Product strategy and UX audit
02
User research: 5 expert and 9 in-depth interviews
03
A design-thinking workshop and user flows
04
UI/UX design for the web app and marketing site
05
Copywriting and a plain-language content system
06
A reusable design system
07
Usability testing across all three user segments
08
Front-end development delivered in Vue.js
Research
We found out who would really use it first.
Before any pixel moved, WANDR ran expert and user interviews, a trends benchmark, and secondary research to pin down Appevate's real audience, and it changed the brief.
01
5 · Expert interviews
Documentation is the whole game.
Mobile developers on iOS and Android told us a new API lives or dies on clear, example-led documentation that doesn't assume what they already know.
02
9 · User interviews
The buyers weren't the builders.
From tech-savvy founders to non-technical marketers, the people who choose Appevate rarely write the code that installs it, so onboarding had to carry them.
03
Goals · Dashboard
Owners want goals against results.
Users asked for “a dashboard that shows clear performance and result metrics based on the campaign's objectives,” not a list of individual payouts.
One product, three buyers who had to say yes.
Persona 02
Angela · the marketer.
Marketing manager hired to restart growth. Knows marketing cold but is still learning what an API even is, and will do the legwork herself.
Extreme user
Non-technical
Hands-on
Persona 03
Paul · the developer.
Overloaded mobile developer who inherits the rewards program. Wants clear docs, a way to test it works, and to get back to building.
Extreme user
Technical
No time
Make a developer's job something anyone could finish.
WANDR distilled the research into four design decisions.
01
Documentation that assumes nothing.
Setup was written for the least technical person in the room, explaining each step and term instead of presuming prior API knowledge.
02
A wizard that picks the program.
Instead of asking owners to know CPA from CPM, the product asks their goal, grow, retain, re-engage, and recommends the program that fits.
03
A dashboard of goals vs. results.
The dashboard leads with whether a campaign hit its objective, so an owner can see at a glance if a program is working and what to do next.
04
One key, one tap.
Copying and pasting the API key was a common failure point in testing, so it became a single, unmistakable action inside the flow.
Principle 01 of → Continue scrolling
THE KEY INSIGHT
The hard problem wasn't the interface. It was who had to use it.
Appevate's product was strong, but the people it was sold to, non-technical app owners, weren't the people who could install it. Redesigning screens made the product look better. Rebuilding onboarding, documentation, and the program wizard around the non-technical buyer is what made it adoptable. Get that wrong and adoption stalls before the first program ever launches.
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Client Voice
In their words.
“
Wandr took the part of Appevate we were worst at explaining, the integration, and made it something our own customers could do without us. They came in as researchers and left us with a designed product, a brand, and a Vue.js front end our engineers could ship.
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