Make your users' results easy and attractive to share

Many products produce something personal: a workout summary, a test score, a reading streak, a year in review, a personality result or a finished design. Shareable results turn those outcomes into polished images or links that users can post in one tap. Each post shows friends what the product does, in the most persuasive form possible: a real result from someone they know. This fits consumer apps, learning and fitness products, quizzes and creator tools.

Why it works

People share things that help them express who they are or show progress they are proud of. A clean card showing “I ran 500 km this year” or “My top genre was jazz” does that for them. They are posting about themselves, and the product comes along for the ride.

For the viewer, a friend’s result is both proof and curiosity. They see that the product works for someone like them, and they often want to know what their own result would be. That curiosity is what pulls them into signing up. Each new user then gets results of their own to share, which keeps the loop running without paid media.

How to do it

1. Find your shareable moments. List the points where users get a result they feel good about: finishing a course, hitting a streak, getting a score, completing a project or reaching a milestone. Check your support inbox and social mentions for screenshots people already post.
2. Design the card around the person. Lead with their name, their number or their type. Keep your logo small and place it in a corner. The card should feel like their achievement with your product in the background.
3. Make it look good everywhere. Create sizes for stories, feeds and link previews. Test each one on a real phone in dark and light mode.
4. Add a hook for viewers. Include one short line that invites a viewer to get their own result, such as “What’s your type?” with a short link.
5. Put sharing one tap away. Show the share button right at the moment of the result. Use the phone’s native share sheet so people can post to any app.
6. Build a landing page for each share. When someone opens a shared link, show the result with a clear call to action to try it themselves. Set the page’s title and preview image so it looks right in chats and feeds.
7. Track every share. Attach a share ID to links so you can see which cards lead to signups and which users bring in the most friends.
8. Refresh the format. Rotate designs, add seasonal or yearly summaries, and test new result types. The same card every week stops getting attention.

Example

Spotify Wrapped is a well-known version of this tactic. According to Spotify’s newsroom, the company first ran a year-in-review campaign in 2015, renamed it Wrapped in 2016 and built it directly into the app in 2019. Each December, listeners get a personal summary of their top artists, songs and listening habits, packaged as story-style cards they can post to social media. Spotify says Wrapped engaged a record 227 million monthly active users in 2023. The design makes the listener the subject of every card, which is why people want to post them.

A hypothetical example for a smaller business: a language-learning app adds a card each time a learner finishes a unit. It shows the learner’s name, the number of new words and their current streak, with a small “Can you beat my streak?” line. Shared links open a short placement quiz instead of the app store, so friends get a taste before installing.

Metrics to track

• Share rate. The share of users who see a shareable result and post it. Use it to compare result types and card designs.
• Views per share. Visits to shared links divided by the number of shares. A rising number means cards are travelling further.
• Signups per share. New users who arrive through a shared link. This is the number that tells you whether sharing is driving growth.
• Activation of shared-link signups. The share of these new users who reach their own first result. High activation means the loop can repeat.

When it backfires

• Brand-first cards. A card that looks like an ad for you gets fewer shares. Put the user first and your logo second.
• Sharing private data. Fitness, health, money or test results can be sensitive. Let users preview the card and choose what appears before posting.
• Pushy prompts. Asking users to share after every small action trains them to ignore the button. Save prompts for moments that matter.
• Weak landing pages. If a shared link opens a generic homepage or a broken preview, the viewer’s curiosity is wasted.
• Rewards for posting. Paying for shares can fill feeds with spammy posts and may break platform rules.

Questions people ask

What kind of results do people share?

Results that say something flattering or interesting about them, such as a milestone, a streak, a personality type, a score they beat or a summary of their year. Plain statistics with no story behind them are rarely shared.

Should I offer rewards for sharing?

Usually it is better to make the result itself worth sharing. Rewards can bring in low-quality shares and may break platform rules. If you test them, tie the reward to a friend joining.

Which format works best for share cards?

Design for where your users post. Tall images suit stories on Instagram and TikTok, while wider images with good link previews suit X, LinkedIn and messaging apps. Many products generate both.

Sources

• We're Commemorating a Decade of Spotify Wrapped With Our Best and Boldest Wrapped Yet (Spotify)