MINARA MOWSHUMI
User Experience Researcher and Designer
ADDA
How to convert users from Freemium to Premium
Overview
The company wants to design an experience that will allow users to subscribe and pay a monthly fee.
Problem Space
The client company is a startup company that launched a movie streaming platform for consumers who wants to enjoy Bangla movies two years ago.
After searching for good old Bangla movies and series in various platforms Adda realized it was time to take matters into their own hands and help other desperate viewers who are looking for Bangla shows or movies.
Adda is a movie streaming app just, a mash on Netflix and YouTube but mostly for Bangla movies. They focus not only inn bringing the latest movies, but also the rare gems of Bangla culture for their viewers
The product has been well received and has a healthy user base of free uses. Now the company reaches a point to convert the users to pay a monthly fee.
Objective
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Create the opportunity for new users to subscribe to the premium product upon registration in the signup flow.
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Create the opportunity for returning free users to become paid subscribers in the sign-in flow as well as within the product.
My Role
I was the sole designer responsible for the UX research and UI design, with the help of my mentor.
Targeted Audience
18 - 24 years and tech savvy
Tools
Figma
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Invision
DISCOVER
Research Plan
Objective
Identify opportunities to convert users from freemium to premium
Research Question
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What will opt users to go from freemium to premium
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The cost of the “benefits” for premium for the stakeholders
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How will I convince users to go into the premium (How to attract users within UI Design)
Methodologies
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User surveys
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Screener Surveys
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User Interviews (5-10)
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Usability testing (10).
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Competitive Analysis
Participants
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User aged 18+
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Have doctor’s visit (2+ annually)
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Own a smartphone
Competitive Research
Streaming media services such as Spotify, Pandora etc. for music, and YouTube, Netflix, for video have witnessed large scale adoption in recent years, specially in the time of Corona. Also I did not do any competitive research on Netflix because unlike Adda Netflix if not a free app. So i thought a better option would be Youtube video streaming.
User Survey and Interview
In order to identify the opportunities to convert the free users, I sent out the interview invitations to my friends and recruited people from the social media that meet the characteristics of the target users and to understand what their goals, needs and the factors affect their decision in choosing the platforms and upgrading the service.
Interview Findings
Quotes
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“Love the offline music”
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“I love that i can cancel anytime”
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“I love watching movies”
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“I use Youtube Premium for add free”
Findings
Most Used Streaming App
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Youtube
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Netflix
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Pirated Sites
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Cable Apps
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Others
DEFINE
Affinity Map & Empathy Map
To gain a better understanding of ADDA users, personas and empathy maps were created by people interviewed and surveyed. This helped to keep the project focused on the real users and their habits.
Empathy Mapping
Persona
How might WE (HMW)
From my interviews and personas i created i could see there are three problem statement that we need to address to convert to our HMW:
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Users want to download movies to watch while they are travelling
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Users want to watch the latest movies that comes out.
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Users want to have access to old Bangla movies that they cannot find else where.
Users of Adda love watching Bangla movies, but considering the target audience it is important to note that most will not be willing to spend on a premium account. For this I came up with two most important HMW quotations that was raised from my interviews
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HMW allow users to experience premium programs: Most users said they were not comfortable with paying monthly specially because they were not sure of the benefits. So i a free month trial we could show users that they can download movies, watch the lastest and the oldest movies too.
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HMW introduce Cancellation anytime: Users wanted to be reassured that on some months they would like to not renew their membership
IDEATE
By analyzing the competitors, referring to user survey and interview, I came up with few factor that could be added to provide a better feature for paid members.
Sitemaps
And after clarifying the relationship between the factors and the opportunities to bring in the conversion, I continued to create a detailed sitemap to serve as the guidance to design user flow.
Userflow
Sketches
Quickly sketching out app frames and features allowed for numerous iterations and refinement in the initial design of the app.
Wireframe& WIREFLOW
Wireframe
The goal of this project is to convert free users to paid subscribers. In order to understand how to implement the conversion opportunity for the users, I moved on to creating wireframes in Figma and designed the opportunities for conversion.
I tried to make sure that there is minimum interruption or pop ups that does not annoy users as that will cause bad user experience.
I had to make sure that the viewers of this app are not interrupted from what they are watching because of pop ups every now and then as users do not like to be interrupted. They are already being interrupted with ads and out goal is to transfer free users to premium and not lose any existing users.
I then created my initial wire flow for first round of usability testing
Wireflow
VALIDATE
I used Figma to create prototypes and invited 5 participants to conduct the first round of testing. I recruited the users from social media sites (Facebook, family and friends including). I conducted all usability testing remotely as for COVID so it became easier while we need to keep the social distance at this moment. I sent out the Figma prototypes to the participants via Skype.
After only 3 tests, it became clear that my initial design of the premium icon and asking to login before the streaming was flawed.
Detailed test report can be viewed here.
The Summary for my results are given down below:
Iterate
After the first usability test I made some changes to my initial design. I added a “crown” icon to indicate premium action required and also removed the need to login in before any streaming. After these changes I proceeded to prototyping high fidelity design
However after further reaching into my UI I realized this icon was just not right for the design. I looked a bit too out of place and so After final consideration i decided to change he icon to "VIP".
This was simple and to the point and it worked well with my design
DESIGN
UI DESIGN
Once everything was validated and tested, I moved forward to design the interface of the app. To help me with the UI design, I created a basic UI kit for the app that included: typography, color palette, icons. Then I created initial high fidelity designs.
Also if you notice i changed the “crown” icon representing the premium to VIP and the color of the crown icon was clashing with the background color and “VIP” was more inviting to users.
BRAND STYLE
Moodboard
Inspiration: Deep colors, cozy night, homely, dawn, Winter.
UI KIT
UI DESIGN
Once everything was validated and tested, I moved forward to design the interface of the app. After I created the UI kit for the app that included: typography, color palette, icons, I created initial high fidelity designs.
Validation: High Fidelity Design
Test, Iterate, Repeat !!!!
Results summary for high fidelity design test are given below and then iterated high fidelity design
Major Findings
One of my major findings from this project was that I understood “the importance of icons” .
I had to change my “main” icon at least three time for my users to relate it to the premium action.
Conclusion
