Subscription Revamp for VCCircle
Product
VCCircle.com is the pre-eminent source of news, information, data, and analysis on alternative investments in India. The platform covers deals, exits, M&As, investors, investments, entrepreneurship, management, and strategy. It is the first website in India to have launched a premium subscription model.
Problem
Consistent decline in the percentage of subscriptions bought by the users across months and quarters.
My Role
As a Senior Product Manager, I worked with our multidisciplinary team (customer support, design, technology, testing, marketing, editorial) to revamp subscription for vccircle from conception to launch. I conducted market research, current/prospective customer interviews, competitor analysis, analyzed the data and trends for subscriptions across the years, and worked closely with the lead designer and lead developer.
Goal
Increase the percentage of subscription buying month on month.
Before Subscription Revamp
Problem Understanding
The management was concerned about the decrease in subscription buying percentage.
As a Senior Product manager my task was to analyse the root cause and why was the subscription decreasing month on month and how can we not only resolve this issue but get the subscription numbers up as well and decrease the churn as well.
Tasks Performed
Performed the following tasks in order to understand the root cause of the problem in order to a solution:
Analysed the data across weeks, months and years for subscription patterns.
Analysed the Google Analytics events, funnels, subscription journey analytics, page abandonment.
Checked all the mails by the prospective subscribers, current and past subscribers, messages on social media platforms with respect to subscription, chat with our customer care support.
Interviewed current subscribers with respect to challenges during subscription buying, their suggestions.
Analysed and interacted every day with the recent subscribers, those who abandoned the subscription process. This was done through mail, whataspp or over a phonecall, to understand the issues, problem, recommendations.
Result of Analysis
It started emerging that the UI/UX of the subscription journey was one of the main reasons for the abandonment.
Payment gateway issues accounted for almost 55% of the users not able to complete the subscription process.
User journey, abandonment etc was not giving any correct data. So it was found out that the "Events" in Google Analytics across the whole subscription journey were not implemented either in some pages or if implemented then they were incorrectly implemented.
Evolution
Had multiple brainstorming sessions with the lead designer (UI/UX) for the project. Gave my suggestions based on the customer interactions, data analysed, competitor analysis so that the context and the issues and solutions proposed act as a useful proposition during the course of the project.
Started analysing and interacting with multiple 3rd party payment gateway service providers to resolve the payment gateway issues along with having multiple payment gateways if any one is not working.
Collaborated with the content team for content changes in the communication medium ( mailers, whatsapp messages, sms messages) through which interaction is done with the user/customer/subscriber.
Created new processes:
o For every prospective customer drop during the subscription journey, then immediately the prospective buyer details like email and mobile number would be sent to the customer care team and they would then immediately interact with the customer through a phone call or whatsapp.
o Even after the successful subscription buying the customer care team would call the customer immediately to welcome and do the onboarding and would try to get the customer to fill the personal details.
o The events in Google Analytics were properly implemented across all the pages in the subscription journey, so that anyone in the organization can analyse the data easily for the drop or successful subscription buying.
Finally, after the effort of the multiple teams (product, design, engineering) we came up with the UI/UX for the VCCircle subscription journey which had the following:
o Lesser number of clicks for the user to perform the task
o Only mobile number is required to buy the subscription.
o No user personal data collection before the main task (i.e., subscription buying) is complete.
User personal data ( industry, sector, designation country, state, city) was completed through WhatsApp reminders, email reminders, nudge during website browsing etc.
Metrics
Subscriptions bought - 60% increase month-on-month
Subscription payment success - increase from 45% to 84%
Subscription payment failure - decrease from 55% to 13%
Other Analytics
Success and dropout from one page to the next in the subscription journey.
Customer feedback, reviews via email, whatsapp, chats or calls to the customer care team.
Key Takeaways
Strengthened my understanding of UI/UX, giving me the ability to work from start to finish with a talented Lead Product Designer who helped to push the important project forward.
Understanding and analysing the problem from multiple aspects because we don’t know which aspect might be affecting more or less or may not be affecting at all.
Following agile methodology in order to complete the project quickly and in an iterative manner.
After Subscription Revamp
