Summary
"Zookal Study provides study tools to students via a subscription based model. However, one ongoing problem we've been facing is the high churn rate. Our users are students and many of them unsubscribe due the price, lack of use and other competitors.
Currently, when users try to unsubscribe we will prompt them with the cancellation flow offer (A limited time offer, giving subscribers a 50% off their next billing cycle). The cancellation flow has been identified as a very important tool for user retention, so a redesign of the current MVP would be valuable."
Tackling Customer Churning with Product Psychology and Research
PRODUCT DESIGN . ZOOKAL
So... What's the problem
The challenge that we are trying to tackle is the high churn rate of subscribers. From initial subscription to cancellation, users will face problems with pricing, overall ux/ui, bugs, content, competitors or the product just doesn't meet their expectations. (refer to the image below)
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This simplified user journey maps out a few reasons for user cancellation. We've been constantly working on our product to improve the UX/UI, bugs, content etc but these are all ongoing issues that are high-effort and time-consuming to address. There's also cases where the student has finished their studies and no longer require the tools.
We need to...
Retain the user when they attempt to cancel their subscription
I identified that the cancellation process has a lot of potential for reducing churn rate, as this is the final touchpoint of the user and our last chance of user retention. The current cancellation flow offers users 50% off their next billing cycle when they attempt to cancel their subscription. However, it is still an MVP design and there's a lot of UX/UI gaps that can be improved with a simple redesign that can be low-effort and have a high impact on customer retention..
The hypothesis
By redesigning the current cancellation flow and updating the UI (will be actionable and low effort), the voluntary churn rate will decrease.
The current design
Hmm... what would you change about the design?
(Try and take some time to think about it)
After evaluating product psychology and user recordings
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Evaluation
I reviewed user screen recordings and used product psychology techniques. Here are just a few issues that i've identified
1. THE COPY IS TOO LONG
The copy is too long and doesn’t show the main benefits clearly. The text should be easily readable and express the message clearly to the user.
2. SELECTIVE ATTENTION
The brain tends to ignore content that is high effort or irrelevant to the user’s intended action (which is cancelling your subscription). So in this case, the user uses selective attention and tends to ignore the irrelevant text and would just click the cancel subscription button on the bottom. This is also quite evident in most of the hotjar screen recordings that i’ve looked at.
3. CTA IS TOO PROMINENT + OVERALL UI
Also, the cancel button is more prominent than the accept offer button
The "final" design
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Next steps
This project is currently in the engineering backlog and due to be released in Q1 2023. We will roll out 50/50 A/B testing with the current design. If successful, we can look into other gaps in our product which can be redesigned using product psychology and facelifted with low-effort and actionable UI changes.
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Success metrics
We will know that the hypothesis is true if there is an increase in the offer-redemption % in the cancellation flow. This will prevent as many users from churning as possible and result in higher profits.