Melodic | My Site

CASE STUDY

A startup company launched a media product two years ago. It is a freemium model that has a mobile-web experience and a mobile app for both iOS and Android. The company’s business strategy was first to build a user base by offering a free product, then to evolve the feature set so they could monetize on a premium (paid) product. At this point, the product has been well received and has a healthy user base of free users.

Problem Statement:
How would you design an experience to encourage new and returning users to subscribe for premium service during sign-in as well as once they've logged into the site?

Overview: About the project

Challenges

Create the opportunity for new users to subscribe to the premium product upon registration in the signup flow, and for returning free users to become paid subscribers in the sign-in flow as well as within the product (once logged in).

Users aged 18–24
Very tech-savvy
Very budget-conscious
This type of media is a very important part of their life

What I Learned

Using secondary research as my tool of choice, I noticed that several sites allow you to view/signup for premium services during the signup phase. But not many sites give you this option during the login phase. So, there weren’t many sites with this functionality to use as a point of reference. Even when I found one, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how to make the links both accessible and cohesive. This was important to prevent the repetitive loop from becoming confusing or potentially alienating the user.

Research Plan

Here is my research plan which lists out my research goals, as well as the methods I used to accomplish those goals.

Usability Test Script

Here are the questions and tasks for participants that helped me validate core aspects of the solution to the business problem.

UserFlow

Here is the red route. Which is the critical and frequent path that a user will take to complete a task.

Moodboard

Here is a collage of imagery gathered from various sources to represent the visual aesthetics I wanted to incorporate into the UI of the site.

Results

After several rounds of testing, all users agreed that the issues had been addressed. One user mentioned that they would like to see more screens and on the comparison chart some of the copy was hard to read. Once on the site, I added several screens that link from the dropdown menu (add to favorites, search and cast to device). All users agreed that the look made a positive impression on them, and even though this was a prototype, they wanted more.

10+

Online secondary research (hours)

6 usability tests

3 iterations

Prototype

Click image to view prototype

Conclusion

This projects biggest challenge was designing an experience to encourage new and returning users to subscribe for premium service during sign-in as well as once they've logged into the site. There weren't many sites with this functionality. So I spent a lot of time trying to understand how to make the links cohesive and accessible without becoming too repetitive. After several rounds of usability testing and iterations, the final prototype was deemed successful. The possibilities for a site like Melodic are endless. While developing the sign-in function, I envisioned the algorithm of the site making suggestions about other areas of interest for the user based off of their selections.

Testimonial from Prototype user

“It’s very easy to navigate. I love the look of the website;
it’s very calming and eccentric looking.”