A seven-day journey that took first deposits from 6 to over 20 per cent of signups

In 2021 PokerBaazi gave every new player a signup bonus, and only 6 in 100 of them went on to make a deposit. Many signed up for the bonus, used it, and went to play somewhere else. I redesigned the first week as a seven-day journey, a bottom sheet on the home screen with one small task a day and the first deposit offer always in view. This study covers the jobs behind it, the decisions, and how the result was measured.

The short version

• My role. Hands-on design from the first sketch to the handoff. The research, the flows, the screens and the completion animation were mine. I worked day-to-day with the product lead, the growth team who owned the bonus rules and amounts, and the Android and iOS engineers. The graphic design team drew the treasure chest and the task illustrations to my briefs.
• The timeline. Discovery and design ran from May to July 2021, and the module shipped in August 2021.
• The outcome. The share of new players making a first deposit went from 6 per cent to over 20 per cent.
• The method. Jobs to be done for framing, a comparison of two reward models, an effort and impact matrix for scope, and two options compared for each contested decision.

What was the challenge?

A new player got a bonus for signing up, and after that nothing happened. There was no reason to open the app on day two, and no path from the free bonus to a deposit of their own money. So most players did not deposit, and the ones who came only for the bonus played it out and left for another app.

• The business asked for a higher first deposit rate. A player who has not deposited rarely stays, and the bonus paid to that player is lost.
• The player had just installed a poker app, had not decided whether it was for them, and did not want to risk their own money to find out.
• Both had to work on the home screen, on the first launch after signup, for someone who did not yet know what a buy-in was.

The two models we looked at

Before drawing anything I looked at how gaming and learning apps kept a new user coming back in the first week, including Dream11, MPL, RummyCircle and Duolingo. Two models covered nearly all of them. A daily streak, where the reward keeps growing as long as you do not miss a day. And a finite journey, a fixed number of days with one task each and a clear end.

I proposed the seven-day journey and the product lead agreed. A streak punishes a missed day, and a new player who misses day three and loses everything has a reason to leave. A journey lets them miss a day, marks it, and moves on. It also has an end. A new player can see the end of seven days, so the journey looks doable. And a player who hops between apps for bonuses gets a reason to stay the whole week, with a reward on each day, before they decide whether to try another app.

Jobs to be done

The old flow was built for the business alone. I wrote the jobs out for both sides of that screen, the new player and the team paying the bonus. The inputs were the growth team's bonus data, which showed how many players who took the bonus left without a deposit, and a week of reading the support tickets new players raised in their first seven days.

The new player. When I have just installed a poker app and have not decided whether to put money in, I want to try the tables and get something for showing up, so that I can see whether this app is for me before I risk my own money.

The business. When we have paid a bonus to a new player, we need them to make a first deposit within the first week, so that the bonus is earned back and the player stays.

The anxiety is the main problem. A new player does not want to lose their own money on an app they do not trust yet. A bonus that lands all at once does nothing about that, because it is spent before trust is built. The forces turned into three rules, and every screen had to keep all three.

Journey of a new player

The first launch after signup was the only visit we could count on. Whether the player came back on any other day depended on the design. So the design starts on the home screen with a bottom sheet, and each day gives the player one small reason to come back.

The matrix set the build order. The bottom sheet on the home screen, with the first deposit card in it, was high impact and low effort, so it came first. Defining a task for each day and handling every state was high impact but heavy, so it followed. The invite card was cheap and mattered less. The completion animation was the most expensive part and came last.

Why seven days

Seven days is one week, which is how players already think about their time. It is long enough to fit a free game, a tournament and a deposit without asking for all three on the same day. And it is short enough that day seven is visible from day one.

The week was built as a ladder, and the growth team set the amounts. The smallest reward asks the least, a free game on day one for 25 bonus. On day three the reward is a ticket to a daily tournament, and coming back later in the week pays 50 bonus. The biggest reward, up to 2500 bonus, is paid only against a first deposit. The deposit card sits under every day of the week, so the top rung is always in view.

Dark or light

The app had both modes, so the first question was which one the sheet should use. I built both.

The dark one. A full page in dark mode with neon colours and a patterned background. It looked different from everything else before gameplay, and dark gave a lot of room to make the bonus feel special.

The light one. A bottom sheet in the light mode of the lobby, covering half to two thirds of the screen, with the home screen visible behind it and a drag to close it.

I showed both to 12 new players in short sessions. Nine of the 12 read the dark page as a game table and looked for a seat, and closing it dropped them straight into the light lobby. Dark mode in PokerBaazi belongs to the table, where regular players spend hours. The light sheet looks like the lobby it sits on, keeps the home screen in view, and can be pulled down and skipped at no cost.

The deposit card

The point of the module was the first deposit. But a sheet that opens with a deposit ask is the first thing an anxious player closes.

So the task of the day sits at the top, small and easy, with a 24-hour timer and a real reward, 25 bonus for playing a cash game with a free buy-in on day one. The first deposit card sits right under it every day, in a different colour from the other cards and with the biggest reward on the sheet, up to 2500 bonus. It stays in view all week, and no task needs it. The invite card sits below that.

The header of the sheet carries a separate offer from the growth team, an assured 500 bonus on a daily deposit. It ran across the app for every player, and I kept it to one line under the title so that it never became a task.

The screenshots at the top of this study show the three states the task card moves through. A timer while the day is live, a red missed mark when it is gone, and a green claimed mark with the button turning into play now.

The locked button

Tasks for the coming days are visible but locked. The question was whether the locked button should look like every other disabled button in the app, or stand out with a lock icon so the player knows there is something to come back for.

We chose the plain one in review. The card already says locked in red at the top, so the icon on the button said the same thing twice. And a disabled button that looks different from every other one in the app makes the player stop and work out what it means.

When a task is done

Finishing a task had to feel like an event, so that a small reward was noticed and remembered.

The completion screen is a treasure chest that opens, a congratulations ribbon, and then the reward itself, bonus cash or a tournament ticket. I built it as a Lottie animation so it plays the same on both platforms and can be reused for any reward in the app. The button under it changes with the context. After a task tied to a game it says play now and takes the player to the table. After a task with nothing to follow, there is only a close.

What shipped

Three calls had two options each. Here they are in one place, with what decided them.

The module went out as a bottom sheet on the home screen with a seven-day strip, one task a day with a timer, the first deposit card under it, the invite card, a locked state for the days ahead, and the completion animation for every reward.

The outcome

The share of new players making a first deposit went from 6 per cent to over 20 per cent after the module shipped. The rupee figures are the company's, so the result is shown in players.

For every 100 signups, 6 used to deposit, and after the launch more than 20 did. That is more than three times as many depositors from the same number of signups.

How the number was read

Every signup was given the same seven-day window, the length of the journey, and a player counted as a first depositor if they deposited inside it. The growth team compared the signups from the four weeks before the launch with the four weeks after it, more than 30,000 signups in each period, on the same rule.

The journey and the new bonus rules went live together, so the lift belongs to both. The growth team set how much each reward paid. The design decided when a new player met each reward and kept the deposit card in view all week.

Where the bonus money went

Before, the bonus was paid to every signup at once, so 94 of every 100 bonuses went to a player who never deposited. After, a bonus was paid only for a task or a deposit. For every 100 new players, 36 did no task and were paid nothing, 44 did tasks and got only the small bonuses, and the 20 who did tasks and deposited got the big bonus too.

What held up and what did not

Held up. The bottom sheet in the lobby's own light mode, which a player could pull down and ignore without losing anything. The deposit card that was always in view and never a task. And the seven-day limit, which gave the journey an end a player could see.

Did not. The journey has no flexibility. A player who wants to deposit on day one still sees a sheet built around day one's small task.

There is no help. The sheet explains nothing about how the bonus works or when it can be withdrawn, and those were the first questions in the support tickets. A help line was cut from the first release to keep the sheet short, and it should have gone back in.

And responsible play. The header offer of an assured 500 bonus on a daily deposit asks a new player to put money in every day of their first week. Today I would keep the tasks about play and learning, keep the deposit card as it is, and leave the daily deposit offer out of the sheet for players in their first week.

Conclusion

The journey was built around what a new player is afraid of, losing their own money on an app they do not trust yet. It gave them a week of small tasks and rewards before they had to decide, and kept the first deposit in view the whole time. For every 100 signups, first depositors went from 6 to more than 20.