Case Study: How Zerion uses 3Box to boost engagement and retention
3Box partner series highlights innovative use cases in the ecosystem
Zerion makes DeFi simple, beautiful and delightful for both developers and users. With their web and mobile apps and developer SDK, they are making money legos accessible and powerful to builders and consumers alike.
Given this focus on the user, it’s no surprise that Zerion was one of the first dapps to integrate 3Box profiles. They understand the need to build for the user, not just the technical capability: apps for humans need profiles, not hex addresses. This is true even when the focus is on financial transactions.
Major boost to usage metrics
Zerion highly respects user privacy and strives to continuously minimize the amount of user data collected. Anonymized meta-data is only used for product improvements and never sold externally.
With the little and anonymized data they collect, the Zerion team wanted to see how basic read-only profiles impacted usage of their web app. Does this simple UX improvement help business goals?
Users have far higher retention and engagement when a 3Box profile is attached.
First, they looked at retention on the platform for all users versus users with a wallet connected to 3Box. They found that the benefits started on Day 1. Users with 3Box profiles were retained at far higher rates than other users. While exact data by cohort is not available because Zerion takes steps to ensure user privacy and anonymity, this effect continues throughout the first month. Users without 3Box continued to fall off, while users with a 3Box profile remained much more sticky.
Next, Zerion looked at activity between the two user groups. Data fluctuates throughout the month, but users with 3Box consistently engage more than other users, with spiking at times to 2–2.5x the average usage.
Opportunity for more growth
Finally, the Zerion team looked at how users with and without 3Box contributed to their overall user base.
Users with 3Box profiles contributed 20%+ of all activity on Zerion despite making up a much smaller portion of all active users.
As suggested by the earlier data, users with 3Box profiles are adding disproportionate activity and value to the platform compared to those without.
What to make of this data? First, it shows correlation — not causation. We cannot infer that all of the difference in activity comes from signing up for a 3Box profile. In fact, it’s highly likely that the most active users
It does suggest that a clear path to growth is to (a) focus on the users who care about UX, and (b) give them a great experience with rich and social features. These are the users that are retained and engaged, and they have 3Box profiles.
These profiles — along with their data, chat, and other content — can be leveraged across apps. Users and data can be composable alongside money legos in DeFi.
Making DeFi more human
Zerion has known that a great UX is important to users even when their app was primarily focused on monitoring individual crypto accounts and trades. But their thinking and analysis highlights an important point for the whole ecosystem:
DeFi may be about money, but its users are people. Our money legos need to be fun, familiar and human to play with.
It’s likely that encouraging users to sign up for 3Box profiles will drive more engagement. But it’s also important to recognize the users that get the most value from your product. Zerion now knows they can target users with 3Box profiles and likely be speaking to their highest value customers.
In addition to profiles they can offer personalized content, leverage interoperable data from their 3Box spaces (e.g., Metamask watch lists), and offer features like chat or comments to engage them.
What Zerion has shown itself and others is that personalized, human UX is essential to serve the most active DeFi users. And they’ve also shown that we still have a ton of opportunity to grow that base — most of their users still don’t have 3Box, after all.
More coming soon
The Zerion team has big product plans in store for this summer that you’ll want to be sure to watch. Follow Zerion on twitter and if you aren’t already a user check out zerion.io for a best-in-class DeFi experience.
If you’re working on a dapp and want to add profiles, user storage or identity, come by 3Box.io, follow us on twitter, or drop into our community.
