Helping the online newspaper succeed in their first foray in building a premium subscription service.
The subscription product at the Independent evolved throughout my time there. When I joined the product team there was some concern around users’ views on their new subscription product “Independent Minds.” Rather than relying on assumptions I undertook multiple types of user testing to get real user feedback, which went on to inform the rebrand of the product to "Independent Premium," a much easier to understand product title.
Working closely with the marketing team, I led the redesign of the subscriptions page alongside a parallel programme focused on on-site conversion rate optimisation.
Analysis of internal traffic data revealed that many visitors were landing on the subscription page via a single navigation bar button, rather than through contextual on-site prompts. This meant that the subscription page itself had to do the heavy lifting in quickly and effectively communicating the product’s value proposition.
To assess the current page performance, I used Hotjar to examine scroll depth and click hotspots. Two key insights emerged:
These behavioural signals suggested a lack of clarity and engagement further down the page, and a need to simplify the decision-making process.
I launched targeted on-site surveys on the subscription page to gather additional insights. Key themes included:
Using voluntary churn feedback I had previously consolidated into a UX roadmap, I validated our survey data with broader qualitative insights. The roadmap, which ranked issues by volume and complexity (data not shown here due to commercial sensitivity), highlighted two consistent frustrations:
These insights confirmed that the current subscription experience lacked clarity and was a key factor in cancellations.
"There was also a decision made to bring the two product SKU's together, creating two tiers instead, which would reduce confusion around why benefits could be found on both products."
I presented the findings to the marketing and editorial teams. Together, we defined several core problem statements to shape the new subscription page:
It was agreed to consolidate the two SKUs into a tiered model, simplifying the offering and making value differences more obvious to users.
The new page was to be built within our Piano subscription platform to enable future A/B testing via iFrames. I facilitated a workshop with the marketing team to understand their testing priorities, helping us define which design patterns were future-proof and which wouldn’t scale well.
Initial user testing uncovered a clear performance disparity between desktop and mobile. The previous design had been desktop-first, and mobile users struggled with visibility and interaction. This reinforced the decision to take a mobile-first approach in the redesign.
During ideation, I explored multiple approaches to:
I developed four design options, each with varying layout hierarchies, and worked closely with stakeholders to understand their alignment with broader business and marketing goals.
Using InVision, I prototyped the two most promising directions - a tabbed layout and a card-based format. Across two rounds of usability testing, I gathered user feedback by categorising it into three buckets:
I presented these findings to the wider team and used them to guide iterative improvements.
The final design combined strengths from both the tabbed and card-based approaches. This hybrid solution performed best in testing across both qualitative feedback and engagement metrics.
I worked closely with internal developers and Piano to validate the feasibility of the design and ensure it met platform constraints.
At this stage, I partnered with a UI designer to apply final styling using our design system. I created prototypes based on their visual work, tested the flows, and iterated based on user feedback.
Several micro-level enhancements were made:
Over six rounds of usability testing, we saw steady improvements in user understanding and conversion intent.
In addition to redesigning the subscription page, I optimised on-site subscription prompts - often the first user interaction with our product offering. These A/B tests were run via our subscription platform over two-week cycles using a round-robin format, with winners becoming the new default (BAU).
Where appropriate, we also used Google Optimise to test larger variants outside of the on-site prompt framework.
By improving how we surfaced product value and refining CTA language, we achieved significant gains. One high-exposure prompt saw a +898% increase in conversion rate.
Building a video game from the ground up for Brackeys' game jam 2024.
Overhauling how the whole editorial team runs their news desks day to day.
