Introduction

Trality is a platform that offers investors the ability to rent trading bots. Our vision is to democratize algorithmic trading and bring it to the masses. We started as a creator-focused platform, but we pivoted to a two-sided marketplace, where investors could rent trading bots.

The Problem

After launching the marketplace, we spent a lot of time building better tools for creators to build better bots. We had good bots on the platform, but our conversion rates were not good. New users signing up to the platform did not discover the marketplace, and when they did, many did not click into bots. Even when they did, many did not click rent, and when they did, many did not finish the rental process.

Our Realization

When talking to users, we kept hearing one thing: "I like your product, but I did not have enough time to try it out." We learned from this that while functionally, our product had everything it needed and was very efficient in helping the user get the job of renting a trading bot done, it was not good at emotionally catching the user, making them stay on the platform to finish the process.

Our Approach

To address this issue, we turned to gamification. I had read the book about the Octalysis Gamification framework, and the author was highlighting exactly the problem we saw in lack of engagement as a problem of lack of gamification. We ran a workshop to build an understanding and the vocabulary of the octalysis framework. We did an octalysis analysis of our product and categorized each gamification technique into whether it would help us drive signups, activation, or retention. We reserved one month each to work on signups (March 2023), activation (April 2023), and are now working on retention (May 2023).

Every week, I would meet with the designer and CTO, pick the highest valuable experiments, implement them, launch them in AB setting, give them one week to evaluate, and then reprioritize our list of experiments, either improving upon the existing or implementing the new one.

The Result

We implemented several gamification techniques and saw significant improvements in our conversion rates. Here are some things we ended up implementing:

1. An Updates section that would give the user a reason to keep checking the platform.
2. A Weekly Bot of the Week email that users would anticipate.
3. A countdown in the dashboard, telling them when a newly launched bot is going to be executed for the first time.
4. A notification when a user's bot makes the first trade.
5. An onboarding that would force the user to start their first bot, getting every user to the Aha moment.

We managed to get 2 times as many people to check out the marketplace and 3 times as many people to successfully start trading bots. Users who were forced to start trading bots were just as likely to still deploy an additional trading bot on their own.

My Role

As the head of product for Trality, my primary responsibility was to identify user pain points and drive product development efforts to meet their needs. When we realized our conversion rates were not up to par, I took the lead in identifying the issue and proposing a solution. By leveraging the Octalysis Gamification framework, we were able to implement several gamification techniques and achieve significant improvements in our conversion rates. I worked closely with the designer and CTO to prioritize experiments, evaluate outcomes, and continually improve the user experience. My role was to ensure that our product was engaging, efficient, and beneficial for our users and our business.

Conclusion

Gamification is a powerful tool for product development. It can make your product more engaging and can improve conversion rates. By using the Octalysis Gamification framework and implementing several gamification techniques, we were able to significantly improve our conversion rates on Trality. We will continue to experiment with new gamification techniques and hope to see even more success in the future.

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