Tasked with creating a new affiliate marketing platform from the ground up, I led the product design process from initial concept to final UI. The goal was to build a user-centric platform that would stand out in a crowded market by prioritizing ease of use and clarity for the affiliates.
The Challenge
Affiliate platforms drown their users in dense data and confusing navigation. New affiliates face a steep learning curve; experienced ones fight the interface to find the numbers they care about. Competitor dashboards like Digistore24 proved the point: powerful, but genuinely difficult to interact with. The brief was a platform that made the data work for the user instead of against them.
Research and discovery
I ran user research and synthesised it into personas covering both ends of the experience gap, from first-time affiliates to power users. A competitive analysis of existing platforms showed the same failure repeating: features stacked on features with no information hierarchy. Working with stakeholders, we defined the target users and cut the MVP down to what those personas actually needed on day one. The research became user stories that drove every design decision that followed.
Design decisions
Three decisions shaped the product. First, a simplified dashboard built around at-a-glance metrics: the numbers an affiliate checks daily are visible without a single click. Second, navigation organised around user tasks rather than system features. Third, a streamlined onboarding flow that gets a new affiliate from signup to first campaign with the minimum possible friction, because an affiliate who stalls at onboarding never becomes a user at all.
I built Terabyte's design system alongside the product: reusable components, consistent tokens and documented patterns that kept design and engineering in sync. It cut development time by around 35 per cent and meant new screens shipped looking and behaving like the rest of the product.
Outcomes
The onboarding flow I designed brought in more than 250 new users within 48 hours of launch. The design system reduced development time by roughly 35 per cent. Conversion and engagement improved after the redesign, and the platform shipped with a coherent visual language that scaled as features grew.
Given another cycle, I would instrument the onboarding funnel properly and run structured usability testing on the analytics views, converting the qualitative feedback we gathered into a measured iteration loop. The lesson I carry from Terabyte: in data-heavy products, the design system and the information hierarchy are the product.