Tinder Japan

Overview

In 2019, Tinder’s expansion into the Japanese market faced several obstacles across the user acquisition funnel. My designs helped achieve key results for user downloads, onboarding + retention.

View the full case study presentation here

Role

Duration

Design Lead

May — August '19

01 App Store Optimization

Overview

Downloads → Onboarding → Retention
‍
While our marketing campaign in Japan kicked off, Tinder faced low conversion early in the funnel, due to unlocalized app store assets. In just two weeks, we pushed out a winning variant.

Research

For Japanese users, seeing more features can mean that the product provides more value. Japanese culture follows the holistic design approach— a lot of information is taken in before forming an opinion. One wide screenshot is more real estate than the standard vertical shots.

1.2x

More daily App Store Downloads

1.4x

Growth in MAU over 6 months

02 Age Verification

Overview

Downloads → Onboarding → Retention

Tinder wasn’t compliant with age verification policies in Japan and faced being taken off the app store. Alarming as it was, we had three months to launch a verification process while introducing as little friction as possible for the new users that converted from our campaign. The service we selected— Jumio, is a 10-step process that takes a few minutes to complete and anywhere from 5 minutes to 24 hours to verify.

Featured on the Verge + Mashable

V1: Top of Funnel

Given the time constraint, we tested variants of the age verification process in onboarding and upon app-open. Unfortunately, we saw a decrease in match rate for new users (highly important for retention).

V2: End of Funnel

By placing the task right before the reward— users are incentivized to stick through the process. Users can swipe, match and receive messages, but viewing a message requires verification.

Metrics

V2 resulted in a high onboarding completion rate, with a marginal change in match rate. Overall, this lessened the impact on user retention.

03 Profile Interests

Overview

Downloads → Onboarding → Retention

Eastern dating culture is regarded more seriously than in the West. While the stigma against online dating has slowly softened, Japanese users felt uncomfortable/embarrassed they were on a dating app. Marketing research indicated that advertising Tinder as a way to do hobbies/activities with someone was the most receptive. I designed a feature for our users to add and display interests.

User Problem

Users don’t have know what to talk about
Users don’t swipe on each other enough

Business Problem

Because of the lack of conversations and significantly lower match rate for Japanese users, retention was very low.

Solution

By allowing users to display their interests, we offer more opportunities for connections and topic conversations.