Subscription Creation and Management

Business Problem:

After launching the website on a new platform, company revenue decreased. There was feedback and data from users that the subscription model didn’t work as expected and users were canceling.

Customer Problems: 

Customers can only get one subscription shipment each calendar month, but products are expensive so they want to split their subscription orders with their paychecks.

Brand affiliates set up subscriptions for older clients who aren’t tech-savvy and want to ship the products directly to the customer. Currently they can only ship once a month to a single address.

Outcome and Benefit:

Increased subscription revenue and fewer cancellations. Subscriptions work in an expected way that users are familiar with and they encourage their customers to subscribe.

The team and solution.

My role: 

Lead UX designer

My team:

UX manager assisting in quick prototyping and building new components. UX director helping with interviews, running usability tests, and stakeholder management. Other UX designers making updates to the prototype based on user feedback.

Our solution:

Based on research from the current design and previous subscription platform, we allowed subscribers to have multiple subscriptions with different shipment dates, payment methods, and shipping addresses. Users can then organize and easily track and split the expense of products in any way they desire. We also cleaned up the checkout experience to clear up confusion when having one-time and subscription items in a cart.

Wireframing and testing our solution.

After completing an analysis of common subscription management practices, we quickly wireframed out concepts to share and test with. Ideas didn’t have all the nuances outlined upfront, but were a good representation of what we wanted to do to solve the problems. We then talked to brand affiliates about what they thought of the experience based on the wireframes and got feedback on where it did and did not meet the mark.

Tested, thought out, and prototyped.

After talking to four power-users, we were able to implement changes from a few places of confusion it into the high-fidelity prototype. At this stage, we also implemented solutions to address business and development needs and technology limitations. The design solution addressed things like what pricing would look like for different user types, how checkout would work, what error states would look like and say, and more.

After getting designs ready and broken down into development tasks, the time commitment was months long. We re-analyzed the most valuable need and released an MVP approximately 3 weeks later. The MVP solution allows users to create multiple subscriptions, but did not change the design of the current management, checkout, or product page flows that were found to be confusing to navigate as well.

Results, the future, and personal learnings.

Since the launch, there have been positive outcomes toward revenue and subscription goals. Fewer people called the call center to override or complain about issues with their current subscription. There has been an increase in new subscriptions and the amount of items on subscriptions. With each additional release, the goal is to see subscription revenue grow and exceed previous levels.

Businesses don’t usually function in a way that allows for the perfect UX method. This project was set for an undetermined future date. Until one day it was urgent and needed to be turned around quickly. Tight deadlines and urgent business needs come and we don’t always have the luxury of doing full research, interviews, and testing. Instead, we talk to users we know well, and go through wireframes for feedback. We make educated assumptions based on personal experience and what we see other companies doing, and we do the best we can to create a good product.

I love iteration because that is where I find the time to really dig in to the questions I wanted to the first time around. With this project, we were able to find some time to run additional general user testing before the launch of the full project.

Post-MVP-release general user research results.

”Let me open my cart. Did it do it? Where would I find this?

Userzoom TesterLooking for manage subscription section

”I love that, it gives me the next date. That’s really helpful

Userzoom TesterSkip shipment modal while managing