Overview
Turning influencer posts into trackable revenue
Influencer marketing's biggest trust problem isn't reach — it's attribution. Brands investing in creator campaigns couldn't reliably connect a creator's post to a purchase. Did that sale come from the TikTok video, the Instagram story, or the promo code shared in the bio? Without accurate attribution, brands couldn't optimize their creator spend.
The Sales Tracking & Affiliate system was Aspire's answer: a comprehensive offer, promo code, and affiliate link infrastructure that brought deep-link attribution, conversion deduplication, and flexible commission structures to the platform — all through a simplified interface that cut offer creation time from 6–7 minutes to under 30 seconds.
The Problem
Attribution was broken. Commission logic was rigid. Creation was slow.
- 1.Attribution gaps: Standard affiliate links couldn't distinguish traffic sources when a creator shared on multiple platforms. Duplicate conversions from the same buyer inflated numbers. Brands couldn't trust what they were seeing.
- 2.Rigid commission models: Brands needed to offer different commission structures to different creator tiers — flat rate (CPA), percentage of sale (CPS), and hybrid models. The existing system forced a single commission type per offer.
- 3.Offer creation friction: Creating a new offer took 6–7 minutes. At scale, with dozens of campaigns running simultaneously, this was a meaningful bottleneck for brand teams.
My Role
Primary designer for the full STA surface
I was the lead designer on the STA system across its full lifecycle — initial architecture, offer simplification, the promo code system, the affiliate link management dashboard, and the commission configuration UI. I also served as the primary design point of contact for the enterprise accounts that relied on STA most heavily.
Primary design point of contact for 8+ enterprise accounts. Closed 85% of UI blockers (44/52) in 3 days during a critical enterprise escalation period.
Design Deep Dive: Attribution
Making attribution trustworthy
The attribution system needed to solve two problems simultaneously: ensuring each conversion was attributed to the right creator, and ensuring each conversion was only counted once. These aren't just engineering problems — they're UX problems too, because brand managers need to understand how attribution works to trust the numbers.
I designed a transparency layer into the attribution interface — showing brands exactly how a conversion was attributed (which link, which platform, which click window) rather than just showing a final number. This “attribution audit trail” became one of the most-requested features in enterprise demos.
Design Deep Dive: Commission Models
Flexible commissions without configuration complexity
The tiered commission engine needed to support CPA, CPS, and hybrid models, with different tiers for different creator segments within the same offer. The design challenge was making this legible. Commission logic that sounds simple in plain English becomes complex when expressed through form fields.
Tier-builder over free-form fields
Rather than asking brands to fill in raw percentage and threshold fields, I designed a structured tier builder — add a tier, pick the type (CPA/CPS/hybrid), set the threshold. The visual hierarchy made the logic scannable at a glance.
Live earnings preview
A small preview pane shows: 'A creator who generates $500 in sales earns $75.' This immediately validates whether the configuration matches the brand's intent, catching errors before the offer goes live.
Creator-facing commission transparency
Creators needed to understand their earning potential before committing to an offer. I designed a clear commission breakdown on the creator-facing offer card — showing structure, threshold, and projected earnings.
Bulk link generation
Enterprise brands needed to generate hundreds of unique affiliate links at once. I designed a bulk generation flow with CSV import, per-creator UTM customization, and one-click export.
Design Deep Dive: Offer Simplification
6–7 minutes → 30 seconds
Offer creation was the most-complained-about workflow in STA. The original flow exposed every option at once — comprehensive but exhausting. I ran a heuristic audit and identified that roughly 70% of offer creation time was spent on fields that were optional or rarely changed from defaults.
The redesign applied progressive disclosure: a fast path using intelligent defaults, with advanced configuration available behind an expandable section.
The simplified offer creation flow reduced creation time from 6–7 minutes to under 30 seconds — and became the reference pattern for simplification work across the rest of the platform.
Impact
A platform's most critical commercial infrastructure
The STA system became the commercial backbone of Aspire's platform — the system through which brands prove ROI on their creator investments.