How do we increase user retention rate for Shopee's Lottery

Background

Buying things online is a quick and mundane process, Shopee has found a way to engage and keep customers on the app for longer with games they can play in exchange for rewards such as Shopee coins, vouchers from branded-sponsored products, and cash. One of the most well-known and famous is Lottery (Số Gì Đây).

My Role

I am working with other Product Designers in the Game squad. My daily job is working with stakeholders like Business team, Developers, QC and especially PO.

My main tasks:

• Competitors research

• Collaborate with User Research to conduct Usability Testing & User Interview workshop.

• Conducting ideation workshops to gather ideas from stakeholders.

• Design wireframes, Prototypes and UI.

Define Problem

The problem we have is that the number of users returning to play Lottery daily (R2) is decreasing and we have to find out the cause of this and then find a solution to fix it. Along with our ultimate goal: Keep the traffic to Lottery (A1) growing steadily.

Hypotheses Validation 

We sat together to discuss and hypothesize the causes of the above problems. Although many hypotheses were put forward and looked pretty obvious, we decided to find methods to validate the hypotheses we came up with.

• User Interview: To find out what pain points users have that keep them from coming back to play Lottery.

• Usability Testing: We also want to learn user behavior and uncover opportunities to improve our product

To ensure we invite the right participants to the workshop, we will define the personas for the Lottery.

User Personas

Based on the data we got from BI, we set up two personas.

1. Student

• Age: 18 - 24

• Gender: Female & Male

• Location: Ho Chi Minh City

• Behavior: Regular online shoppers, heavy users of mobile applications, enjoy playing various genres of games.

1. Individuals with 1-2 years of work experience

• Age: 24++

• Gender: Female & Male

• Location: Ho Chi Minh City

• Behavior: Regularly use mobile applications, occasionally engage in casual gaming, prefer online shopping.

The number of participants invited to the workshop will be 8 individuals. Given that Shopee's main customer base is female, the ratio will be 5 females and 3 males.

Preparing for the workshop

After reaching an agreement on user personas and the number of participants for the workshop, the next step is to prepare the necessary steps for a successful User Research Workshop, including:

1. Sitting down with Shopee's User Research team to prepare questions for the 1:1 Interview session.
   

2. Creating a Usability Testing script and preparing the necessary tools to support the workshop, including: phones, cameras, laptops to record user interactions on the Shopee app.

After the workshop session with users, we have gathered quite a few insights regarding the game Lottery. I won't be able to list all of them here, except for the main points:

Insight: Although users commented that this is an easy-to-play game, they feel that its rewards are challenging to obtain because there is only one prize available. This gradually leads to a sense of frustration as they feel they are not achieving anything despite continuous play.

Game usability: Overall, this is an extremely simple game, but most users participating in the workshop testing agreed that selecting each number from the series of 6 numbers day after day was an unpleasant experience.

Ideation Workshop

After sitting down with the team to categorize user problems and prioritize them, I began preparing for an ideation workshop with stakeholders to collectively brainstorm solutions:

1. Adding additional small rewards alongside the big prize:

Group Selection: Users can select numbers together with their group, and if anyone in the group wins, the prize will be evenly distributed among them.

Leaderboard: Recognizing users who diligently select numbers daily or win the most coins with extra vouchers.

Daily Reward: Anyone who plays the Lottery receives a gift, and playing continuously for 7 days earns a valuable prize.

2. Improving Game Usability:

Adding an auto-select button for users to choose 6 numbers in just one click.

3. Addressing the fear of not winning rewards:

Introducing the option to select a number pool, where users can complete a task to potentially win on the 5th number, thereby increasing their chances of winning in The Lottery.

Users can also receive rewards for matching the last 2 and first 2 numbers in the selected series of 6 numbers.