Thrown In
I joined Zulutrade as a Junior Designer. Within 30 days, I was the only designer on the product. The platform was mid-redesign — users were dropping off during onboarding, the Trading Terminal was built for power users but serving everyone, and engineering needed direction. I figured it out.
Zulutrade is a global social trading platform: copy-traders following signal providers, investors managing portfolios, all in one ecosystem. The UX hadn't caught up with the product's complexity.
What the Data Said
- 32% of users started account creation and didn't finish.
- 28% abandoned specifically during the external KYC integration step.
- Trade execution abandonment: 30%.
- Only 5% ever converted from Demo to paid — most never left the free tier.
- 70% of new users tried Copy Trading but barely touched advanced analytics.
Research backed this up: 5 out of 10 found onboarding hard. 7 out of 10 knew the product but didn't use it — they trusted Revolut and eToro more. The platform felt risky and inaccessible even to people who wanted it to work.
The Activation Funnel
The biggest drop-off was the KYC step — a third-party integration that pulled users out of the Zulutrade environment completely. They lost trust the moment the context changed. I restructured the onboarding IA to prepare users for what was coming: clear expectations at each stage, reduced perceived effort before the handoff. The goal was to make the external step feel like part of the process, not an interruption.
The Trading Terminal
The terminal was legitimately dense — price charts, signal feeds, copy-trade portfolio, order management all on one screen. The problem wasn't the data. It was that everything had equal visual weight. Professionals and first-time users were looking at the same surface.
I introduced clearer hierarchy: core actions up front, advanced tooling progressive. Navigation simplified. The social layer — following signal providers, sharing plans — integrated into the flow instead of sitting as a separate tab. Copy Trading became the primary discovery mode for new users, which is what the data already showed they wanted.
The Design System
I built the ZuluTrade design system from the ground up: design tokens, component rules, and documentation across Web and React Native. Price charts, social feeds, portfolios, and the Trading Terminal all shared the same structural language — one system, one set of rules, every surface.
That coherence made two things possible. White-label partnerships: partner teams could adapt the visual layer to their brand without rebuilding the UX foundation. And the Capital Wallet crypto integration: I led the design implementation, extending the system with new components that matched the existing language without fragmentation.
Results
- −32% drop-off during external KYC integration
- +29% new user activation through funnel restructuring
- −50% design-to-development handoff time with the system in place
- White-label partnerships unlocked through component modularity
I arrived as a junior designer. I left as the person who built the system the whole team would work from. That's the job.