As social commerce gains momentum, brands are increasingly turning to product gifting for influencers as a strategy to drive customer engagement and to elevate their social media presence.
Prior to the product launch, 90% of prospective users chose not to sign up with Later Influence because it lacked a product gifting feature.
It limited brands' ability to efficiently manage and track their campaigns.
Hubspot's 2024 consumer behaviour statistics shows that 64% of Gen Z and 59% of Millennials discover new products through social media, with many making direct purchases through platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
Existing customers and lead prospects want to manage product gifting for influencers more effectively, but Later Influence lacks a product gifting feature, resulting in a significant prospect abandonment rate.
Brands are spending over 60 minutes on the current workaround
They rely on back-and-forth management of promo codes in spreadsheets and Later Influence, a pain point causing inefficiencies in operational tasks.
The workaround includes issuing promo codes for influencers to redeem on each participating brand’s e-commerce store.
The process of tracking, updating, and managing these codes is handled externally, often through spreadsheets, while the rest of the campaign management continues on the Later Influence app.
🎯 UX Goal
SITUATION #2
Influencer and brand communication not streamlined
While not our primary users, a manual product gifting process creates friction for influencers too — they prefer a streamlined approach where products can be easily received for the campaigns they are involved in.
The current back-and-forth communication to manage product selection and order updates is inefficient.
Product gifting is made up of two parts: selection and fulfillment. The latter is the most critical to address, as we see more major improvements needed to streamline the complicated process.
Integrating with Shopify is a strategic first step
Simplifying product fulfillment is crucial, with e-commerce integration being a competitive standard. Over 60% of Later's customers already use platforms like Shopify or Salesforce, and Shopify’s 28% U.S. market share, global growth, and scalability make it an ideal partner for Later Influence.
Envisioning Shopify Codes MVP
Using the Shopify API, brands can start importing product data into Later Influence, generating discount codes that let influencers receive products for free, shipped directly to their homes.
Alleviates existing pain points of product fulfillment
Allows Later to expand the product in various ways depending on the results that come in
Reduces overall user journey of product gifting
The new journey eliminates 7+ manual steps into fewer and simpler steps.
Leverages brands' and influencers' existing mental models of promo codes
I collaborated with developers to outline the key Jobs To Be Done and divided the work into manageable phases.
Mapping out a user journey flow helped identify potential oAuth edge cases to address early on. The project timeline was then structured into sprints to provide clear milestones and maintain steady progress.
PROTOTYPING FOR STAKEHOLDER FEEDBACK
Creating Shopify codes for influencers takes 2 steps.
Mass communicate the Shopify codes to selected influencers.
Track influencers' product gifting status.
The work doesn't end here
Within the first month post-launch, we've had 9 customers opt in. We've also noticed we reduced the total time of product fulfillment tasks from 60 minutes down to 8 minutes.
We believe some hesitancy among new customers stems from a few key factors. For instance, the MVP still requires users to rely on the Shopify platform during the initial campaign setup, which may create friction. Additionally, competitors’ product catalogs offer more robust capabilities compared to the MVP at launch. These insights highlight clear opportunities to improve and expand our product offerings, ultimately driving higher activation rates among new clients.
Learnings:
Early user testing was necessary for validating the designs and boosting the team's confidence in the project's direction.
Implementing APIs requires clear communication
Next Steps:
Continue to monitor usage and value for existing customers
Depth vs. breadth: Evaluate whether to focus on deeply improving our existing Shopify integration or to expand into new e-commerce platform integrations
Analyze a product catalogue feature with feature team to expand the offerings
