Timeline
3 months
Role
Design lead
Status
Shipped May 25th, 2023
Teammates
Keane Robinson (Data Science), Olli Whittle (Product Manager), Stu, Julian & Muhammad (Eng)
Results
Final designs
TLDR is that Pro is the plan for creators and Premium is for listeners. As our app has grown over the years and become the main space where listeners… well, listen.
We looked at ways to push premium from mobile. We were granted access for Apples new ELE(External link entitlement) which in a nutshell meant we could link out from the app to our website and avoid giving 30% away to Apple.
This was a really exciting project to kickoff as we were about to build something relatively new. “New” in the sense that there weren’t many examples of products doing this at the time, and even less writing about best practices.
Getting our ducks in a row.
This began as a real race to find examples in the wild of products who had been granted this access. The first product in our space was Netflix which helped as a good starting point to see what felt good / bad about the experience before sketching.
What was a big challenge early on was getting a consistent stance on what was acceptable. Out of the few examples that were out in the wild. Some were technically breaking the terms. We would be declined if we tried to follow a similer path.
This Figjam served as a space to keep our thoughts in one area. This became our reference point when we began to map out the journeys.
First flows
There had to be one upsell page that would link out to your site. Meaning, you couldn't be prompting from different areas in the app.
This resulted in a copywriting challenge that it had to be fitting for all touch points a listener may be coming from.
We also weren't able to use a call to action. It had to be an underlined text link.
Helpful
What also helped with rapid testing was getting the help of my teammates who weren't close to this project to test. Getting them to walk through their first time thoughts as they were getting shown messaging from a third party provider was really helpful when playing with real copy in my designs.
Upsell page
Our first step was a very simplified flow that would help us get approved by Apple and to start monitoring engagement.
We had components on hand that would nudge users into this flow. They were the following:
- Onboarding flow.
- When a free user tried to seek backwards or forwards more than 6 times.
Context
At the point in time when we rolled this out. You would be prompted to this page when you tried to rewind on a show. Free plans only gave you 6 free skips.
Rewind prompt
Onboarding
We were seeing early healthy signs of conversions from the first two touchpoints. This warranted further exploration into how we could funnel more listeners into this flow.
During this workflow, I was constantly speaking with listeners. Both free & paid. There were numerous recurring themes that arose. One however, stood above all else. That was the need to download shows.
Context
At the point in time when we rolled this out. You would be prompted to this page when you tried to rewind on a show. Free plans only gave you 6 free skips.
Interviews
We were seeing early healthy signs of conversions from the first two touchpoints. This warranted further exploration into how we could funnel more listeners into this flow.
During this workflow, I was constantly speaking with listeners. Both free & paid. There were numerous recurring themes that arose. One however, stood above all else. That was the need to download shows.
The music player was such a high touchpoint. It was sadly one that hadn't been shown too much love in a few years. Something I'm very proud of is that the design team were constantly thinking about this space in the background, even when we weren't planning on touching it.
This allowed us to move very quickly when the opportunity arose, as key components had already been tested, so there were no bottlenecks.
Primary Goal
Increase the awareness of downloads and drive listeners to the premium funnel.
Secondary Goal
Increase the awareness of the favorite action. This had become a key touchpoint for creators as a vanity metric.
Bonus
Follow our new design goals of putting creators to the forefront.
Music player update
Now that we were getting lots more numbers into our subscription funnel. It was time to revisit the upsell page & experiment with ways to improve and optimize it.
Hypothesis
As more and more users made their way to the premium page, we wanted to put some hypothesis to the test. There were several studies occurring at the same time during this work and it felt like a good time to align.
There were a lot of findings that a lot of our customers cared more about our fair licensing models vs the features itself. So we created an A/B experiment to test which page converted better.
A/B Testing
After numerous trial and error (that’s putting it lightly...) we landed on a flow that both us and more importantly in this case Apple, were satisfied with. We had a point in the app where our customers could opt into our Premium subscription offering without giving 30% away to Apple. This allowed us to not be forced to raise our price to offset that percentage.
In the 6 months since rolling this out, we have doubled are subscription numbers resulting in a much healthier monthly recurring revenue stream.
Subscriber count
Shows being saved
Increase in favorites
Successfully implemented
Giving our music player a much needed revamp
Putting our creators creations to the forefront by enlarging their cover art.