An online fundraising webpage with donation options for $100, $500, $1000, and $5000+ on a black and red theme, including a call to action to be the force that strengthens democracy. The page features a larger gift section with fields for name, email, phone number, and message, and a red submit button. There are subscription options for lobbying data insights, with prices of $57.13 per month or $39.99 annually, offering features like full access, keyword alerts, weekly newsletters, and unlimited access. The checkout section prompts the user to add their email for a monthly plan or continue with Google. The footer includes links for about, shop, contact, privacy policy, and other information, with the Investigative Journalism Foundation logo at the bottom.

Subscriber Experience Design

How can we encourage users to subscribe to our data service?

  • The product boosted the paid subscription rate by 28% and revenue by $30,000

  • Designed high-fidelity prototype and coordinated with a developer to deliver end-to-end subscriber experiences

  • Led content strategy, ensuring the right activities are prioritized to uncover users’ content needs

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Goals

The business goal for this project is to increase revenue from database subscriptions and position it as a primary revenue stream.

With that in mind, I mapped out the design goal: to create a clear, value-focused subscription experience using intuitive language and layout.

Who are the users?

One of the challenge I faced was ambiguitiy in user needs and profile. To better understand who I’m talking to, I mapped out the current paid and unpaid subscribers, then chose the one with the most potential: lobbyists.

I chatted with around 10 lobbyists, digging into their daily routines, motivations, and pain points when accessing policy information

Illustration of Brit, the senior policy consultant, with a quote saying, 'Efficiency is the key to turning research into real influence.' The image also contains her profile, listing her industry as lobbying, location as Ottawa, age as 40, education as bachelor's or master's degree, and most active on Twitter, emails, and LinkedIn. Additionally, there is a section discussing pain points including limited access to industry information, insufficient data analysis time, information overload, and the need for quick, actionable reports.

With this group of audience, they care most about bringing valuable insights to their clients. Therefore, the content for this page focused on:

  1. Showing the benefits (such as saving research time and real-time alerts) by subscribing to the dataset

  2. Establishing credibility of the datasets

  3. Allowing room for users to test those testimonies made in the page themselves

I also conducted conpetitor analysis to see what’s the gap between successful data products and our product.

The Pitch

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Building on the research insights and past data, I pitched creating pages that:

Screenshots of a subscription service webpage showing plans, checkout process, and a donation prompt for the Investigative Journalism Foundation, with annotations highlighting features such as plan pricing, progress indicators, and donation amounts.
A digital presentation slide discussing lobbying activities. It includes sections on gaining insights from industry updates, accessing federal data on lobbying, using GIFs for visual guides, setting keyword alerts, and encouraging donations. Highlighted keywords and annotations explain strategies for engaging donors and conveying information.
Screenshots of a subscription website highlighting benefits, pricing plans, and checkout process for lobby analytics service. The top section emphasizes the advantages of a paid subscription with checkmarks for full access, keyword alerts, weekly newsletter, and unlimited access. The pricing options include a yearly plan for $39.99 per month and a monthly plan for $57.13. The checkout section reminds users of their subscription details, including annual or monthly options, and prompts them to add their email to continue.

Lesson Learned

  1. It’s essential to identify user intent in both content and UI design, and then you can demonstrate product value based on users' needs stemming from that intent.

  2. Less IS more. Making things as simple as possible for users is a direct way to boost engagement.

  3. Testing is key. A major challenge of this project was the lack of prior examples or data points, and the product’s uniqueness made it difficult to determine focus areas quickly. If I were to make an iteration, I would use the current template to gather more user insights.

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