PROJECT OVERVIEW
Background
NOW TV is a subscription-based over-the-top streaming service owned by Sky. The Marketing Team wanted to display pricing and promotions on the NOW Welcome Screen to drive conversions on Subscription Passes per Customers.
This was a 3 month project spanning from Apr 23 - May 23.
Customer Problems
-Lack of critical information: Customers were hindered in making decisions because there was no mention of product prices on the NOW App Landing page.
-Customer uneasiness: Previous research from another project revealed that hidden prices made customers feel "uneasy".
Business Goals
-Increasing Conversions: Specifically average number of NOW membership passes per customer.
Scope and Constraints
Scope was mainly Prospect (New Customers)
Constraints related to
- Pricing data: should be dynamically driven by ATOM (an internal pricing tool) to all platforms and have the ability to show dual pricing at any stage of the purchase journey.
- Promotions data: also dynamically driven by ATOM and to be displayed alongside main pricing data.
- Time: quick turn around on the project to coincide with an upcoming "in-app purchase" field soon to be added to ATOM.
Process
1. Discovery - competitive analysis, existing research
2. Ideation workshop
3. Exploration and Iteration
4. A/B testing - Large Screens
5. Rescoping
Success Metrics
Increase in purchase conversion; specifically for Amazon customers. This was currently at an average of 1.2 passes owned per customer and the aim was to increase this to 2.
Results
The project had to be rescoped after testing, however we were able to test 2 versions of the design.
New Design
Original Design
DESIGN PROCESS
Discovery Phase
The Welcome Screen isn't a new phenomena so I started off looking at how competitors approached the same problem.
By analyzing 11 direct competitors and 5 indirect competitors across Web, TV and Mobile, I sought to build an understanding of
- how they display their pricing and promotions on their Welcome screens
- what products are the main focus in their comparison tables
-what other information is communicated on their Welcome screens
I organized the analysis within Figma - horizontal sections included each competitor with accompanying screenshots and notes.
Close up of Comp Analysis raw data (Netflix TV)
Vertically I had sections for TV, Mobile and Desktop and assessed each competitor accordingly.
Comp analysis raw data
I summarized the raw data within a table for ease of comparison
Comp Analysis table
I then distilled it in to a more digestible format to be presented to wider stakeholders. This helped to gain early buy-in/alignment on design direction.
Netflix page
Audible page
In addition to reviewing competitors, I also reviewed previous research done on our customer's sentiments towards the current landing page on web, cost of living crisis, upsells and NOW membership bundles.
Key Insights (Competitive and Desk Research)
- 80% of competitors displayed pricing above the fold across all devices.
- Those that didn't display pricing on their Welcome Screen required customers to go through a Sign up or Trial flow to view it.
- 40% of competitors displayed promotions and offers on their Welcome Screen.
- Recurring pricing strategies employed by the competition include Anchoring, Strike-through pricing, Centre stage effect.
- Customers find the NOW "Cancel anytime" USP very desirable.
- Customers had a strong negative reaction to websites they believed had a primary aim to sell.
Having built a good understanding of the competitive landscape and acquainted myself with the sentiments towards the current NOW website, I with the Lead Designer organised an ideation workshop with the rest of the project team.
Ideation Workshop
The aim of this workshop was to share the research insights and ideate ways in which we could design an appropriate Welcome Screen.
Unfortunately, Product were unavailable so Workshop participation were mainly UX and UI Designers.
After setting context with the team and walking through the current NOW Welcome Screens across the various devices, we brainstormed our biggest challenges to solving this problem.
Then Affinity mapped to find and group common themes.
Affinity Mapping
Ideation
We voted on viable designs and moved forward with 2 formats as a starting point for design iterations.
- Content focussed
-Text focussed
Content-focussed
Text-focussed
Exploration and Iteration
Exploration was done in hi-fidelity due to the time constraints on this project. I did this in collaboration with the UI design using the NOW UI toolkit.
Adopted the Strike-through pricing strategy which had a strong theme from competitor research
We decided against having competing CTAs to the Join and Sign in actions to minimise cognitive load.
Subsequent explorations focussed more on the Content and bringing that more to the forefront.
Rails are a common design pattern through the product so we started to look at how we could incorporate this on the Welcome Screen to showcase the offers
We also tried to incorporate a more immersive experience with the hero images when the customer navigates to the corresponding offers (i.e. Sports stadium for Sports offer).
Throughout this process, the UI designer and myself sought frequent feedback from the Lead UX and UI designers as well as Product. As a team, we eventually settled on these 2 versions for A/B testing.
VERSION A - Text-focussed
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VERSION B - Content-focussed
A/B Testing - Large Screens
There was an opportunity to test the Welcome Screen alongside another piece of work I was helping out with. We incorporated the 2 versions of the screen as part of the testing flow scenarios.
We showed participants one version of the screen as part of the flow and then at the end of the test, we showed them to other version observing their comments and reactions to both.
Participant overview
- 12 participants: 6 existing NOW Customers and 6 Prospect Customers.
-Accessibility: 2 participants identified themselves as being visually impaired, 1 participant with cognitive impairment)
-Age range: 18-65 years old
-Device range: Samsung TV, Fire TV, PS5, Apple TV
Reactions to Version A - text focussed
30% of the participants preferred Version A.
"No obstructions to what I want to do" (I.e. to Join, Sign In or Explore)
"I like that it's not too in my face" (i.e. about offers)
"Much more simpler"
Reactions to Version B - content- focussed
70% of the participants preferred Version B.
"This beings the membership to life with content"
"This version feels less busy"
"Seeing the content hints at what I'm getting"
Summary
- Prospect customers: There was an opportunity for the Welcome Screen offers to miscommunicate to Prospect Customers on the NOW Proposition (e.g. Prospect Customers only thought Entertainment and Cinema memberships were available).
- Existing Customers: They voiced that the offers would entice them to cancel their membership and sign up again at the lower price.
Rescoping
At this point, I would love to say that we moved forward with Version B due to the overwhelming positive sentiments around this version; sadly this was not the case.
After the testing, there were subsequent conversations with Development and technical constraints meant that the text-focussed version was the viable solution to this project.
The business goal was to increase the average number of NOW membership passes; however feedback from the testing raised red flags as to whether this was the right solution to the business problem.
Needless to say, it was confirmed that the project would need to be rescoped and picked up again. However, due to structural changes within Sky, this project was moved further down on the list of priorities.
REFLECTION
I picked up this project fairly early on in my time at Sky. I had learned from previous experience how important it is to understand and frame success metrics for the project. Although there were no UX metrics set within the departmental UX process, I made sure we were aligned with the Business on what success would look like.
Key takeaways
Involve Development early: Working within a much larger UXD team to my previous role, there was the initial challenge of identifying and building a relationship with the development team. The technical constraints raised towards the end of the project was even more of a motivation for me to prioritise building those relationships.
Maintaining a flexible process: Initially I had wanted to test the Welcome Screen on its own but I was helping on another project at the same time which also required testing. We had limited resources within the UX department and opted to incorporate both pieces of work in to one research project.
