Daily Trivia
Details
Step requires users to either enter their SSN or invite an adult to enter their SSN to sponsor their account if they are under 18 in order to verify their identity and start banking. Many users who enter our app like to investigate the app before they commit to verifying their identity (KYC). The growth pod saw an opportunity to create fun, educational experiences to keep new users engaged to encourage users to stick around as they decide to KYC.
Role
Impact
Product strategy
Visual design
UX Design
Monthly Transacting User Conversion Rate
The Problem
Step's only channel of social-led growth was a simple referral plan, which was not very effective. Step leadership tasked the growth pod with creating a channel for "viral growth" in which users can easily join the app, and feel motivated to refer a friend soon after.
Trivia was the first experimental feature towards this goal. The focus of this experiment was simple: Can we engage with users in our app even before they choose to verify their identity, and build their trust enough to where they might refer a friend.
A first of it’s kind, pre-KYC experience, that drives daily engagement, and builds user trust.
In early 2023, we built Daily Trivia. It’s the first feature in Step targeting daily engagement. We found that users who are unsure about our bank will often sign up, but skip important steps like verifying identity (KYC).
People come to Step because they want to improve their financial literacy, or improve their financial situation in general. For non- KYC’d users, Trivia offers a quick and simple way to learn about the world of finance as they decide whether or not they want to complete KYC and start banking with Step.
The Trivia Leaderboard
In trivia, your daily trivia streak, correct or incorrect answers, and the time it takes to answer the question determine a specific number score which is then compared on a leaderboard.
The leaderboard shows the top 50 users in trivia for the week, and then resets at the end of that week. This leaderboard is meant to motivate users to engage with the questions daily, and also socially validate Step as a product.
Additionally, after each question, we prompt the user to invite their friends to join. This prompt makes up for about 10% of of all referral invites in the app.
Trivia opened the door to other features like it
Step's daily trivia project was a low scope, easily iterated feature that showed the value of bringing users into the app on a daily basis. The initial rollout of this feature showed the higher funding and transacting rates from users with trivia enabled in their app.
The success of trivia as a feature won buy-in from company leadership for other projects like Step Earn, a partnership with a third party which allows users to earn cash by playing games and taking surveys.
Step Earn has also seen great success, and is seen as a great way for users to make some extra cash, and also a potential key revenue builder at Step.
The Result
By the summer of 2025, Daily Trivia had thousands of committed daily users, and increased the total amount of referrals to the Step app by ~20%.
Daily Trivia became a top feature for users. Not only did daily trivia end up increasing Step's daily active user metric, it also notably increased first time funding conversion, which we think is rooted in users quickly gaining trust in the app as they learn about finance in a fun and simple way.
This understanding helped move other projects through the pipeline, which prioritizes user engagement, and giving users ways to earn some extra cash. This prject will stick out to me for a long time, because it was a lightweight way to gage the value of user engagement and "delight". It also taught me how the success of one project can open the door to others like it that might be even more useful to the business.