I was the sole Product Designer working in the Subscriber Engagement team at The Economist. The rest of the team was made up of developers, a product lead, Business Analyst and others. I helped decide and shape the direction of new features alongside a product lead.
As part of a new product roadmap our aim was to increase engagement across the platform, and the focus in this project was around early engagement in the sign up process.
User problem: New subscribers lack visibility and access to key user benefits early in the sign up experience
Working alongside the product manager I began to build a strong foundation of the problem. Existing data research coupled with user research gave confidence to begin the exploration phase with a clear direction. We ran workshops with key stakeholders during this early phase which allowed ideas and research to be shared, discussed and tweaked.
I looked at what The Economists competitors were doing in this sign-up space, which further validated the need for a richer experience for new subscribers.
The initial scope for this project was to redesign the welcome screen that users see right after subscribing. However, everything I’d learnt at the beginning of the process suggested that this needed to be pushed further. Instead of a static page, I proposed a new onboarding ‘flow’ allowing new subs to make the most of all that their subscription has to offer.
See diagram below.
I put together 3 variants of the initial flow and shared these around the business. This helped get an early prototype in front of key stakeholders and gain buy in. We also did some guerrilla user testing to get high-level feedback and identify potential UX issues.
This new flow allows users to take a step-by-step tour of their subscription - interacting with each step as they go, or skipping with ease. Subscribers can view and sign up to newsletters, download the app and browse popular articles.
Due to the speed of delivery on this project we did not extensively test this new flow before it launched. Two versions of the flow were put live and A/B tested - the main metrics measured were the order of the screens which resulted in highest user engagement.