The Elite Contributor Ecosystem

Why the Funnel Matters

The Opportunity

A valuable program that too few contributors could reach

Elite members contribute far more than their population size would suggest. The program gives Yelp a group of trusted local voices while giving contributors recognition, community, and access to events.

The value became compelling once people understood or experienced it, but the path into the program broke down at several stages.

These were connected leaks in the same contributor journey. Improving only the nomination form would not help people who never discovered Elite. Increasing awareness would have limited value if the destination failed to inspire or guide them.

I treated the work as an ecosystem and designed each intervention around the role it played in moving a contributor forward.

Three Design Moves Across the Journey

Design Move 1

Make the Value of Elite Visible

The Elite page served as the main destination for people arriving through profiles, campaigns, Community Manager outreach, and Yelp navigation. Its content was text heavy and repetitive. The experience explained the program without creating much desire to join it, and its calls to action required unnecessary scrolling and an extra step.

I restructured the page around the questions a potential candidate needed answered:

• What Elite is
• Why it matters
• What members experience
• How to become a strong candidate
• Where to get help

Design solutions

• Fresh imagery and video: Updated the content to make the program feel current and tangible.
• Separated the value of membership from the steps to join
• Highlighted events and local Community Managers
• Reduced repeated copy
• Made the Nomination button persistent and accessible

Why it mattered

The page became a clearer expression of the community and a stronger bridge from curiosity to nomination.

Design Move 2

Introduce Elite at a Moment of Contribution Intent

Even a better destination could not help people who had never heard of the program. Manual outreach was valuable but difficult to scale, and broad promotion risked reaching people before Elite felt relevant to them.

I designed an awareness moment for high-potential contributors immediately after they submitted a review. Eligibility rules focused the experience on people who had demonstrated recent and sustained contribution while excluding current Elites, ineligible accounts, and people recently nominated.

The message acknowledged what the person had already contributed before introducing Elite. It did not push them directly into nomination. Instead, it invited them to learn about the program on the redesigned Elite page.

This created a deliberate sequence:

• Recognize recent contribution
• Introduce an aspirational next step
• Provide a place to understand the community before nominating

Why it mattered

The experience expanded the top of the funnel without turning Elite into a generic promotion. It met promising contributors when the program was most relevant to what they had just done.

Design Move 3

Turn Rejection Into Actionable Guidance

More than 80% of nominations were automatically rejected through a generic system message. I redesigned the experience as a guided decision flow that explained the outcome and helped people understand what to do next.

1. Confirm the right squad

Candidates could confirm or correct their primary location before nominating. This reduced preventable mismatches caused by outdated profile information and helped route each nomination to the appropriate local squad.

2. Make the decision feel considered

A short eligibility-check state showed that Yelp was reviewing the candidate's profile and contributions. The result then named the specific reason they were not yet eligible, replacing an error-like message with a clear decision.

3. Turn rejection into progress

The result paired the rejection reason with practical guidance. When more recent contributions could help, the page surfaced a relevant review prompt so motivated candidates had an immediate next step.

I also organized the rejection reasons and partnered with Marketing to keep guidance consistent across the app and follow-up email. Marketing owned the email experience; I connected its message to the product logic and language.

Why it mattered

Rejection became part of the contributor journey rather than a dead end. The design protected the program's quality bar while giving motivated people a clearer way to improve and try again.

Designing One Connected Funnel

Each surface prepared people for the next step

The three projects shared a common design logic:

• The awareness experience introduced Elite only after a person demonstrated contribution intent.
• The Elite page built understanding and aspiration before asking for a nomination.
• The nomination flow preserved motivation when someone was not yet ready.

Copy and interaction worked together across the journey. Awareness language reflected effort already made. The Elite page explained the value of the community without promising membership. Rejection messages named the gap while keeping progress possible.

This consistency mattered because Elite combines aspiration with a selective, human-led process. The experience needed to become clearer without reducing membership to a guaranteed checklist.

Scale and Expected Impact

The work targeted high-leverage points in contributor growth

The projects addressed large opportunities within the Elite journey:

• The awareness experience could reach approximately 880K high-potential reviewers each year.
• Modeling estimated that greater awareness could produce 1K–5.8K additional Elites annually.
• The page redesign estimated that a 2% nomination increase could add about 175 Elites.
• The nomination work estimated that increasing valid nominations from 20% to 25% could add approximately 5K Elites annually.

These figures represent opportunity sizing and projections, not measured product outcomes. They helped the team prioritize the funnel and understand how improvements in awareness and nomination quality could translate into more contribution.

The Longer-Term Direction

A visible progression path for aspiring contributors

The funnel work exposed a deeper limitation. Individual messages could introduce Elite or explain a rejection, but contributors still lacked a persistent way to understand where they stood and how their body of work was developing.

The emerging strategy extends the journey from isolated touchpoints toward visible progression:

• Introduce Elite after a person's first meaningful contributions
• Show how reviews, photos, and other activity build a strong contributor profile
• Provide ongoing guidance before nomination rather than only after rejection
• Preserve human judgment while making progress easier to understand

This direction connects Elite to Yelp's broader contribution strategy. The goal is to help more casual contributors develop into recognized local voices, while keeping membership grounded in quality and community participation.

Reflection

Ecosystem design required balancing growth with selectivity

The most important shift was recognizing that awareness, consideration, and rejection were not separate interface problems. They shaped one person's understanding of Elite and their willingness to keep contributing.

The work also required a careful balance. We wanted to make the path clearer without turning Elite into a mechanical checklist or weakening the role of Community Managers. The strongest designs gave people useful guidance while preserving the human judgment that makes the program meaningful.

I also learned that rejection can remain a productive moment. People who nominate themselves already have motivation. Clear reasons and a relevant next step can redirect that energy toward stronger contributions instead of allowing it to disappear.