Subscription Dashboard
2019 March
Design thinking / Webapp design / Visual integration
The approach
  • Creat a morden visual style
  • Redesign the Dashboard page
  • Improve category visual system
  • Deliver a mobile version
Project Summary

Skift is a B2B media company in travel industry, company has been expending fast in the past three years and growing extensively on merging with other two branding.

The combination has brought up new challenge to restructure the subscription service system.

Overview

Skift is a B2B media company in travel industry, company has been expending fast in the past three years and growing extensively on merging with other two branding. The combination has bring up new challenge to restructure the organization system.  

Problem statment

Currently Skift has three branding subscription, they have individual login system and website.In order to allow subscriber managing different subscriptions plan in the one place, we are planing to reshape the organizing system.

Goal

We define a long term goal, how everything optimistically could look two years from now:
In two years this dashboard will be the place to maintain all branding subscriptions, and improve functionality for subscribers to overview services system.

Overview
My role
End to end design process
  • user research
  • wireframe
  • visual design
  • prototype
My team
Chief Product Officer: Jason Clampet
Product / Visual Designer: Me
Developer : Mike Linden, Rachel Bronstein, Minhee Park
Research Sales: Anne Duffy
Tool used
Sketch
Adobe illustrator
InVision
Zeplin
Project Milestones

Three moth ( MVP stage )

Role and team

My role covers end to end design process that has involved user research, wireframing, prototyping and interaction/ visual design. Team up with developers, Chief Product Officer and research sales who is expert of sales data analyzing.

Project timeline

3 months (MVP stage)

Process
Current scenario
  • The current system does not support subscriber self-manage system. For example, if subscriber wants to look for specific report invoice, they will have to call customer service.
  • After purchasing report on the website, subscriber will receive an email notification for downloading the PDF report. There is no order history for subscribers to overview purchased reports.
  • Subscribers had difficult time to look for the information they need, for example, update subscription plan or renew license. Usually they reach out to customer service chatroom or call customer service.
Objective
  • Save user’s time from looking for downloaded reports in their email
  • Provide accessible user experience of self management system
  • Be transparent about the report status and subscription plan
Problem & Opportunities
“ How might we develop seamless integration process for overlap user accounts and create a user-center design with business need? ”
Problem statement

Robert D

Robert D is an editorial strategist in travel industry. He has been Skift Research individual subscriber for over two years and enjoy reading the issue summary before purchasing.
When he is browsing the research website, he could not remember if he had purchased the reports already, so he copies the title and search the download link in his work email.

Mel S

Mel S is working in a well-know aviation company, and she enjoys reading the latest data analysis of Airline Weekly issue every Monday.
Once day, she is managing the next year expense budge, but she could not find the subscription renewal date on the website, she calls the customer service for help.

What is the business need?
After interviewing with our stakeholders, these goals and concerns are leading me to efficient solutions.
Goals
  • Be seen as travel industry leader
  • Increasing the subscription rate
  • Ability to collect numbers for data analysis
  • Provide a great subscription service system
Concerns
  • The time limitation
  • Keep low churn rate
  • How to make subscriber happy
Business project objective
Increase the subscription rate and make subscriber happy
Research Insights
After interview 3 stakeholders and having 10 subscribers to complete the surveys. The following design feature was inspired by the combination of business goal and user needs.
Authorize the permission
From the ideas :
Learning from survey results, enable to increase the joy of multiple subscription users, the dashboard system will need the permission to access the account information.
Recommendation
From the ideas :
Enable to achieve the business project objective, we need to understand subscriber needs and wants, by using purchased history and subscription type to recommend relative events or reports.
Build awareness in industries
From the ideas :
According to the survey, there are 40% of subscribers in hospitality industry do not know Airline Weekly has been part of Skift, and they are willing to understanding the product details.
Brand illustration system
From the ideas :
Express the idea of subscription message, and deliver the brand image to connect user instead of using brand logo.
DISCOVER
Background research

Skift has over 300k newsletter subscribers and over 2 million monthly visitors at skift.com. According to digital footprint from Marketing team, 1 out of 4 Skift readers are C-suite executives, and majority of Skift readers are VP-Level and above. Based on this scenario, I would like to enhance the readability and user-center designs that can scale to million users.

Context

When- I assume the user will use dashboard during the working hours. Many of them use it during the day with laptop or desktop devices.
Where- Users will mostly use this dashboard in the office.

Stakeholder goals and concerns

What goals and concerns do we need to address?

Subscriber feedback

Before working on this project, there are some value comments and feedbacks from our loyal subscriber. However due to timeline concern, we are not doing user interview for this project, but I would love to adopt some suggestions as users needs.

Define
Scope

User: People are in their 20 to 60 years old, tech savvy and business related to travel industry.

App requirements
Assumptions
Constraints
Trade offs

Display each brand’s subscription plan or report detail in dashboard

License renewal notifications

Persona
User goal
User task
How might we (HMW)
Ideate
Matrix
Userflow

Userflow provide better understanding of decision points and where persona's journey to desired goal can be different, based on decisions the persona makes inside the yellow diamond.

Product & Design Decisions
Key decisions #01
Authorize the permission after login
For multiple subscription users, the authorization are allow system to access user’s information and display accurate all subscription plan’s information in one service system.
Key decisions #02
Design priorities
After prioritizing all ideation, I created the first wireframe based on the user needs and business objectives. However due to the time concern, me and developers decided to simplified the interface and also considered the subscribers usually able to see the related reports with detailed descriptions on the website. It won't be necessary to have the recommendation on the homepage.
Tradeoffs: Reposition the recommendation
Building a feasible  solution for v2
Enable to build a feasible solution for recommendation section, how might we to increase the visibility of the section in the user flow.
‍
In order to fix the v1 situation, I decided to reposition the section after purchase or download action. Whenever user download the reports, they are able to see the related reports recommendation based on the download history or next coming related events.
Key decisions #03
Build awareness in industries
According to the survey, there are 40% of subscribers in hospitality industry do not know Skift has expand subscription product in aviation industry and event industry.
‍
In order to grow the subscription rate, the solution is raising user’s awareness of available subscription options.
Provide the options for user to engage
Enable to build the awareness to other industry, I decided to display all available subscription brands for user to engage. By clicking the CTA button, the system will navigate user to the detailed description page. 

Key decisions #04
Build awareness in industries with brand illustration
Brand illustration express the subscription’s message and connect with users and highlight the product value.
Research subscription provides deep analysis, data and expert opinion on the companies and trends that are shaping the future of travel.
Inside Skift newsletter, our readers rely on our in-depth reporting, exclusive interviews, and breaking news coverage to make decisions and get ahead of competitors.
Airline Weekly delivers valuable airline business every Monday. Including marking approaches, fleet, and airline data.
Outcomes

Phase 1 of the subscription dashboard was successfully launched. The subscription rate has increase 4% compare to November on 2018. We have received good amount of positive comments from users about the new system is so much easier for them to find all their invoices, transactions and renewal dates.

So, looking back we did not achieved our business goal of promoting conferences and events on the default page. But the design was user-centric and navigate our subscribers to access what they need, and tremendously improved customer service not spending time to tell subscribers where they can get their invoice.

Wireframe
Design
Skift.com log in
Permission to authorize account info
Default page:
Making the design decision by information hierarchy.
Skift subscription dashboard page: 
With expired subscription type
Check out page:
With existent account information to purchase research report or create a new account during purchase process.
Visual Design

Subscription brands category

Skift Research
Skift Airline weekly
Skift Newsletter

Iconography

Individual user
Sign out
404, page can not find
Enter invite code for enterprise plan
Successfully activated your subscription
The following item is now unlocked
Mobile version
Outcomes

Phase 1 of the subscription dashboard was successfully launched. We have received good amount of positive comments from users about the new system is so much easier for them to find all their invoices, transactions and renewal dates.

For the internal team, it is smarter to collect data instead spending time on google sheets and excel files to figure out the renewal rate and churn rate. Since the launch of the dashboard, Skift subscriptions business has grown in the short time and helped subscription sales team’s process.

So, looking back we did not achieved our business goal of promoting conferences and events on the default page. But the design was user-centric and navigate our subscribers to access what they need, and tremendously improved customer service not spending time to tell subscribers where they can get their invoice.

Thanks for amazing team
Chief Product Officer: Jason Clampet
Product / Visual Designer: Andrea Yang-Yanez
Developer : Mike Linden, Rachel Bronstein, Minhee Park
Research Sales: Anne Duffy
Andrea Yang-Yanez
andrea.yang.yanez@gmail.com
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