My role
Product Designer
Team
Product, Growth, Data, Android Engineering, Backend Engineering
Timeframe
Content
Timeframe
Content
01 / CONTEXT
BrandBee is the consumer app behind Similarweb's mobile intelligence.
Acquired as Embee, BrandBee is Similarweb's opt-in consumer panel: users earn rewards through surveys, games, shopping, and other tasks, while contributing behavioral mobile data that feeds the company's B2B intelligence platform. Users get paid; Similarweb gets data — that exchange is the entire product.
02 / THE PROBLEM
The product rewarded presence.
The business needed participation.
Users earned a passive $0.10 daily bonus for keeping the permission enabled, redeemable at $3.00. That supported data contribution — but many users collected the bonus without completing revenue-generating surveys or offerwall tasks.
TIME TO FIRST EARN
28 days
Users took nearly a month to complete their first earning activity.
ACTIVE-EARNER RATE
20%
Only one in five users engaged with monetized earning opportunities.
UNINSTALL RATE
18%
Nearly one in five users uninstalled the app.
Make effort pay, keep the permission on.
BrandBee couldn't simply cut the passive reward. It's what keeps the data-sharing permission enabled and the panel alive. The product had to make surveys, games, receipts, and offerwall tasks worth the effort, when doing nothing already paid.
03 / RESEARCH
The opportunity wasn’t to outpay competitors.
Competitive research showed that rewards apps offered largely similar ways to earn. If money alone defined the product, users could switch to whichever app offered more.
We combined demographic profiles collected during BrandBee onboarding with earning activity in Mixpanel. Single parents emerged as one of the most active earning segments — evidence that some users were already engaging deeply with the available opportunities.
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04 / PRODUCT INSIGHT
We didn’t need to offer more money.
We needed to make earning potential easier to see.
If money was our only differentiator, users could always leave for a higher-paying competitor.
The catalog structure made earning value difficult to understand, creating uncertainty and undermining trust.
05 / DESIGN PROCESS
The old home showed offers. It didn’t help users choose.
The old home presented earning options as a catalog rather than helping users decide. Points obscured cash value, offers lacked clear payouts, carousels hid choices, and navigation followed content categories instead of user intent. These issues made earning harder to understand and trust.
DESIGN PROCESS 01 / VALUE & VOICE
Make money feel like money.
The old interface expressed rewards as points, making their cash value hard to judge. I brought dollar amounts forward and used a clearer, more direct voice, so users could understand what an earning action was worth before committing to it.
BEFORE
The top bar emphasized identity and a points balance. Users had to translate abstract points into real monetary value.
after
The new experience shows dollar-denominated earnings and gives users direct access to earning actions.
DESIGN PROCESS 02 / NAVIGATION
Organize around what users want to do.
The navigation reflected content categories — Home, Surveys, Rewards, and Shopping — rather than what users came to accomplish. I reorganized it around Earn, Cashout, Save, and Account, giving earning a clear starting point and making the next step easier to find.
BEFORE
Navigation was filed by content type — Home, Surveys, Rewards, Shopping — organized around what things are, not what users came to do.
after
The nav is now intent-based — Earn, Cashout, Save, Account — matching how users actually think about the app.
DESIGN PROCESS 03 / OFFER CLARITY
Make every offer easy to compare.
Survey cards led with time and points, while games and offerwalls often lacked a clear payout. I redesigned the cards around a consistent hierarchy: cash reward first, then effort and requirements. Users could compare opportunities and decide with greater confidence.
BEFORE
No hierarchy: duration led, the reward hid in coins, and the provider was unclear.
after
Reward first in real money; effort and provider in fixed positions — identical on every card.
DESIGN PROCESS 04 / MODULAR EARNING
Make earning choices visible.
Horizontal carousels hid available opportunities and made discovery depend on scrolling. I introduced reusable Earn shelves with clear labels, filters, and consistent offer slots, helping users explore different ways to earn and choose what suited them.
06 / VALIDATION
Same offers. A different experience.
We tested the redesigned home against the previous experience with a 50/50 split of new users. Both versions offered the same daily bonus, surveys, and offerwalls. One month after launch, we compared time to first earning action, active earning, and uninstalls.
TIME TO FIRST EARN
▼ 12.6 days
From 28 days on the old home
ACTIVE-EARNER RATE
▲ 38%
From 20% on the old home
UNINSTALL RATE
▼ 9%
From 18% on the old home
07 / REFLECTION
Retention is not the same as meaningful engagement.
BrandBee didn’t lack ways to earn. It lacked a clear way to communicate their value and help people act. The redesign reinforced a lesson I carry into growth design: make the user’s path to value as clear as the business outcome you hope to improve.