How Neon transformed product development with 1,400 experiments, leading to a 168% increase in revenue

Neon is a leading digital platform that offers a range of innovative financial products tailored to meet the diverse needs of its customers. With a focus on user-centric design and continuous improvement, Neon aims to deliver a seamless experience driven by data and experimentation. The company has made substantial progress in leveraging analytics to refine its offerings, increase engagement, and accelerate growth.

Like many fast-growing fintech companies, Neon faced a critical turning point in 2023. Despite their innovative products and growing user base, the company was struggling with fundamental challenges that threatened to limit their growth potential:

Decision-making based on assumptions: Need for improvements regarding the analysis of customer behavioral profile data. “Before Mixpanel, we were relying on assumptions,” explains Igor Costa, Technical Program Manager at Neon. “We had no real way to understand which features resonated with users and which were falling flat.”

Fragmented data and siloed teams: Data was scattered across multiple platforms, making it difficult to get a complete picture of the user journey. This fragmentation hindered collaboration between teams and slowed decision-making processes.

Inefficient experimentation: While the company recognized the value of testing, their experimentation processes needed further implementation and scale  In their first six years, Neon managed to run 70 experiments—a pace that couldn’t keep up with their ambitious growth goals.

Cultural barriers: Only a small number of employees had the tools and authority to run tests, creating bottlenecks in the innovation process.

These challenges weren’t just theoretical—they had real business impact:

• Resource waste: Features developed without robust data analysis often missed the mark, leading to wasted development resources.
• Lower customer satisfaction: Without the ability to optimize user experiences effectively, Neon’s Net Promoter Score was 40% lower than where it stands today.

Missed growth opportunities: The lack of optimization in the validation process has prevented faster innovation cycles and the exploration of new market opportunities.

Recognizing that their assumption-based approach was inadequate, Neon made a strategic decision to adopt Mixpanel as their central analytics and experimentation solution. This wasn’t just a tool change—it was a fundamental shift in how the company approached product development.

Building a structured framework

Neon embedded experimentation into every aspect of their product development cycle. They established standardized templates for experiment design, including clearly defined hypotheses, primary and secondary metrics, and guardrails to ensure every test generated meaningful insights.

Scaling experimentation dramatically

The results of this structured approach were immediate. In just 12 months, Neon ran over 1,400 experiments—a 20-fold increase from their previous pace. This massive scaling allowed them to test a wide range of hypotheses across different customer segments and product areas.

Diversifying testing methods

Rather than relying solely on traditional A/B tests, Neon expanded their toolkit to include Fakedoor studies, Concierge tests, and other methodologies. This flexibility enabled them to gather more nuanced insights and tailor solutions to diverse customer profiles.

Democratizing innovation

Perhaps most importantly, Mixpanel’s user-friendly interface enabled any team member to propose and run experiments. “It’s no longer just the product team,” Costa notes. “Now, anyone can run experiments and contribute to our product development.”

User growth and engagement:

• 180% increase in Monthly Active Users (MAU)
• 50% increase in activated accounts

Revenue impact:

• 168% increase in Total Payment Volume (TPV)
• 12% improvement in credit card offer conversion rates
• 5% increase in investment conversion rates

Customer satisfaction:

• 38% improvement in Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The app home redesign success

A specific success story involved optimizing Neon’s homepage through experimentation. Neon ran multiple A/B tests, analyzing the impact of a new promotional banner. Using Mixpanel, the team tracked user interactions, conversion rates, and overall engagement. The results were clear: the new area for promotions using visual banners increased click-through rates by 30%, validating the hypothesis that a more engaging visual would boost user attention.

One of Neon’s most successful projects stemmed from their experimentation efforts: the redesign of the app home within their app. This change was the result of over 80 individual experiments, testing everything from voice tone to product hierarchy. The final redesign led to significant improvements, such as:

• +3.77% retention of logins after 7 days
• +1.26% click-through rate on offers per session
• +12.42% click-through rate on active products per session

The changes made to the homepage are already driving stronger product funnels, improving conversions by 12% for credit cards and 5% for investments. “These improvements are a direct result of our rigorous experimentation culture. We’re not guessing anymore; we have the data to back every decision we make”, shares Costa.

Cultural transformation

Beyond the impressive metrics, Neon has achieved something perhaps even more valuable: a complete cultural transformation. “We have the data to back every decision we make.” emphasizes Costa.

This shift has empowered teams across the organization to take ownership of user experience improvements. Real-time experiment monitoring enables quick reactions and agile product iterations, while the practice of learning from both successful and failed experiments has created a culture of continuous innovation.

Neon’s success story is far from over. The company is actively expanding their experimentation capabilities into new areas, including advanced features like personalized app homes based on behaviour. “We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do with experimentation,” reflects Costa. “The more we use Mixpanel, the more possibilities we see to improve our products and better serve our customers.”

With their robust experimentation framework now deeply embedded in their product development process, Neon is well-positioned for sustained growth, faster innovation cycles, and even deeper customer insights.