Nekodex is a decentralised exchange that allows you to buy and sell cryptos in the Ethereum ecosystem, with less friction around things like paying gas (transaction fees).

During my time contributing as a Design Engineer, I collaborated closely with the founders, the Growth team and backend engineers to acquire as many users as possible, in a constant loop of “form a hypothesis, design a solution, ship and get insights”.

The newly launched vault products, with high yields of 5–11% APY, didn’t seem to convert. On top of those attractive yields, we even rewarded users who deposited into the vaults with extra coins (Nekocoins, launched by us). The Growth team posted about this on X and in the Discord community channel, but the data we were seeing in Amplitude wasn’t ideal.

I had two hypotheses. First, users hadn’t noticed how attractive these vault products were. The information wasn’t promoted anywhere obvious within the app; it was sitting quietly in the “Earn” tab, leaving users unsure what these products were about. Second, there was too much friction between scanning the wall of text in the product description and taking action: actually depositing their money into a vault.

With those hypotheses in mind, I introduced the “Guided Card” feature on the homepage: a carousel of cards sitting just under the account’s total value box. The carousel cycles through a few highlighted promotions, including these Earn vault products. I worked with the Growth team to craft the card’s copy and short description, making sure it grabbed users’ attention and encouraged them to tap and read more.

In the guided card itself, I designed three guided steps, paired with a progress bar UI. Step 1 introduces the benefits and rewards of depositing into the vaults. If users were interested, they could see that they could finish depositing and claim their rewards in just 3 guided steps, helping them feel confident and in control.

The conversion rate for daily active users depositing into the vaults increased by 20% in just two weeks, and this feature was here to stay. Afterwards, we put any products or rewards campaigns we wanted to promote in this section on the homepage.

We all know that it doesn’t happen that often to a product designer, but when your hypotheses turn out to be right, it feels bloody great!