30% Growth in Returning Users after a Home Screen Redesign
Brought clarity, simplicity, and a more visually appealing experience to a temporary jobs app home screen, resulting in a 12% increase in users taking their first task.
VentraGo! is a B2C gig marketplace app where people can find short-term jobs in various fields, such as clothing retail, moving services, cashier assistance, order picking, promotions, and more.
The company operates a full-cycle platform, including a B2B side where large retail companies can post job offers. The key success metric is how quickly we can fulfill their staffing needs.
Our goal was to help users quickly and easily find temporary jobs. When we began the redesign, we discovered that 90% of users were closing the app and never opening it again.
For temporary workers in retail, moving services, or promotional work, the window of opportunity is narrow. A cashier position posted today might be filled within hours (even minutes), making speed and clarity of paramount importance in the user experience.
Users struggled to navigate the main screen, couldn’t find suitable gigs, and ended up closing the app without returning.
From a series of individual and group interviews, we learned that since the motivation to earn money is often an emotional impulse, only 10% of users reopened the app to check for new tasks.
That’s why it was important to improve the block structure for better readability, make search and filtering more intuitive, and simplify the overall architecture and navigation.
Lift 7-day return rate from 18% to ≥ 30% within two months of release.
Raise first-task assigment on the home screen from 45% to ≥ 60% (+20 %).
Improve readability and maintain accessibility for the 60 + segment
These goals were agreed with Product, Growth, and Engineering before design work began and became the yardstick for go/no-go decisions throughout the project.
Legacy design created by a freelance designer
02 Research & Insights
Together with the product manager and analyst, we conducted a series of user interviews, gathered feedback from B2C and B2B stakeholders, and reviewed the most common user issues reported to customer support. This helped us identify the main areas to focus on.
A nice bonus during the design and ideation process was that we could get feedback from real users the same day, many of them regularly visited the office, so I was able to show them mockups and ask for their opinions directly.
One of the in-house interviews we did with users
03 solution
I hade everything that I need, and after a series of drafts, hallway chats, and low-key tests, here’s what I changed:
Logos on the task cards: Each card now shows the company’s logo, so gigs are easier to scan and brands feel familiar at a glance.
Straight-up pay details: No more fuzzy ranges. We list the full shift length and the approximate total payout (e.g., “4-hour shift • about $85”). It’s the number people actually use to decide.
Subway shortcut: Together with the engineering team, we added the nearest subway station (or two) right next to the address. Users can gauge the commute without opening maps.
High-contrast layout: I A/B-tested several color, spacing tweaks and elements with about 20 participants. The winning version helped users find "the right" gig a little faster.
There were several challenges along the way:
We needed to redesign the interface without introducing drastic changes, as this could create friction for a portion of our users (appx. 20% are over 60 years old).
We had to align the redesign timeline with the development team.
I also redesigned the Filters flow. Early data shows higher match rates, but that story is for a different case study 🙌
04 takeaway
For me, this project was all about balance: between younger, tech-savvy users and older users who find it harder to adapt to change; between an outdated legacy design and a new, modern look and feel; and between stakeholder expectations and the realities of our development capacity.
I’m proud that, in part thanks to the work we did, the product grew from its first thousand users to over 800,000.
We solved key business problems, improved the user experience, and established the app’s visual style. While the initial performance metrics were already strong, these changes helped the company reach the Top 4 in the market over the long term.
Outcome
+ 30%
Growth in Returning Users
+ 12%
Increase in Users Taking First Task
+ 8%
Increase Fill Rate
