The Washington Post: Gift Subscriptions
Reimagine the gifting experience and increase gift subscription redemption rates by strengthening user trust through clarity and transparency.
Role
Product Designer & UX Researcher
Timeline
Summer 2022, 2 Weeks
Team
Ellis Lee, Design Mentor
Haley Blum Carrier, Content Designer
Nicole Orders, Product Manager
Tools
Figma
Usertesting.com
The Washington Post is an American news company aiming to keep their users informed about local, national, and worldly issues. Currently, the historic company is striving to adapt to the changing news industry; one approach is to reevaluate the existing digital experiences.
This project started when a Principal Product Designer, Ellis, saw the Subscription-related analytics dashboard. Both of us were shocked to see that 26.30% of people who are gifted a Washington Post subscription do not redeem it. This meant that the Washington Post has lost $1.1 million dollars in revenue each year, and this experience had not been touched in over 7 years.
Gift subscriptions redemption analytics
Additionally, after talking to a representative from the Customer Care department, we learned that each time there is a gift subscription promotion, it resulted in hundreds of customer service hours spent on relieving related problems. For example, the gift subscription Black Friday promotion resulted in 1,700 related tickets and an increase of 75 on-call engineers. Two of the most common Customer Care issues included:
1. Recipients not knowing how to redeem their gifts.
2. The gifters were not sure if the recipient had redeemed their gift.
When thinking about the holistic gifting experience, there are two main flows to consider: the user who is buying the gift (gifter) and the second is the recipient/redeemer. To understand the current gifting ecosystem and to identify creative opportunity areas, I conducted usability tests of each flow and internal analyses by walking through the experiences myself.
The current gifter flow consists of the purchasing checkout page, the confirmation page after the user successfully checks out, and a confirmation email.
Current checkout page.
Current confirmation page indicating a successful purchase.
Current confirmation email to the gifter.
My key insights and identified creative opportunities for the gifter flow include:
( 1 ) From the usability test, 2/5 users incorrectly said that they would put their own information into the recipient field, which pointed to the confusing and unclear copy on the purchasing/checkout page.
( 2 ) Many users cited they were interested in purchasing another gift subscription but felt confused and frustrated that they didn’t know how to buy another. The confirmation page is a dead-end, and the user has no choice but to close the tab.
( 3 ) The confirmation email includes irrelevant information. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to why the user’s account management settings are there. 3/5 users said that this was a spam message due to the visual designs being outdated and not aligning with the current brand guidelines.
( 4 ) The outdated visual designs that don’t align with the design system and brand guidelines.
Switching perspectives, the current redemption flow begins with an email notification, a screen to enter the redemption code, and a confirmation page.
Current email notification to recipient.
Current page to input the redemption code.
Current confirmation page that the recipient has successfully redeemed their gift.
My key insights and identified creative opportunities for the redemption flow include:
( 1 ) From the usability tests, 3/5 users said that they were suspicious and confused by the email notification, and 4/5 said that they would message their friend because they thought it was a scam. These responses highlight the glaring issue of lackluster user trust in this experience.
( 2 ) Share more information about the gift to the recipient to build user trust and transparency about what they are receiving.
( 3 ) There’s an opportunity to add the onboarding flow after the confirmation page to establish a relationship with new users for future engagement.
( 4 ) The outdated visual designs don’t align with the design system and brand guidelines.
In addition to the usability tests and internal analyses, I conducted a comparative analysis of other companies’ gifting experiences, and these companies ranged from the Washington Post’s direct, indirect, and potentially encroaching competitors.
One experience that stuck out to me was DoorDash’s. DoorDash sent a follow up email to the gifter notifying them that the recipient did not redeem their gift yet. This idea utilizes a previously existing relationship and builds more transparency throughout the experience. The email included tips to self-resolve redemption problems, which could prevent the extreme amount of customer care tickets that the Washington Post receives. Afterwards, DoorDash would send another email that includes a CTA to buy another gift once the recipient redeemed their gift which further enhanced transparency and eliminated confusion.
Notification email sent to gifter that the recipient hasn't redeemed their gift yet.
Confirmation of redemption sent to the gifter.
I also admired the New York Times’ experience. Similarly to DoorDash, the NYT includes a CTA for the gifter to buy another gift subscription. But here, it’s on the confirmation page of the website.
During the Concepting phase of the project, I translated my insights into tangible changes within each flow.
Based on my insights, I wanted to make the following changes to the gifter flow.
Highlighted in bright blue are the main revisions and additions to the gifter flow.
During the initial usability tests of the existing experience, I found that the gifters were incorrectly filling out information on the purchasing page. More specifically, they would put their own information where they should have put the recipient's information. To mitigate this confusion, I collaborated with Haley to add more clarification through the copy that also reflects the Washington Post's inviting tone.
Existing checkout page
Redesigned checkout page with updated copy.
Revisions circled in red.
From the usability tests, gifters cited that they wanted to buy another gift subscription but didn't know how to do so. To eliminate the dead-end in the experience, I added two CTAs: one to buy another gift subscription and another to continue to today's news.
Existing confirmation page on web
Redesigned confirmation page that includes recirc CTAs.
Revisions highlighted in red.
Next, I updated the confirmation email to mimic the confirmation page on the web and deleted irrelevant information, such as links to the gifter's Account Management settings. I also updated the visual designs to match the brand guidelines.
Existing confirmation email
Redesigned confirmation email to reflect the information on the confirmation page on web.
To provide more clarity and transparency to the gifter, I added a new email notifying them that the recipient had not redeemed their gift yet. I thought this email notification would be a helpful intervention as it builds upon an existing relationship, especially with someone the recipient likely trusts. As for the designs, this email mimics the previous confirmation email, but I added this top section of tips and best practices to encourage the recipient to redeem their gift and to hopefully reduce the number of issues for Customer Care.
An initial iteration of the new email.
Final iteration that includes the tips section and revised copy.
The last addition I made to the gifter flow was a new email confirming that the recipient redeemed their gift. This would provide transparency and reduce the number of customer care calls. Furthermore, as this is the end of an interaction with the user, I wanted to see how I could extend engagement. I included a CTA for the user to buy another gift subscription to capitalize on the users’ peak and to increase gift subscriptions. Pictured below are various visual design iterations I went through to try to convey a sense of celebration and excitement.
Different iterations of the confirmation email.
The two main changes to the redemption flow were to update the email notification that would provide more transparency into what the gifter was receiving and to add an onboarding flow after they redeem their gift.
The main issue with the existing email notification was that recipients thought it was a scam. To build more user trust and increase transparency, I wanted to add more details about what they would receive in the gift and to prioritize the information that would build trust, such as who the gift was sent by, the note that goes along with the gift, and their claim code.
As I continued to iterate on the designs, I wanted to enhance the feeling of excitement and align the visual designs with the Washington Post’s brand, so I reused some of the WP Illustration assets in the benefits section.
Lastly, I added another CTA to redeem the gift at the end of the email to further encourage the user to do so.
My first iteration starting with the most essential information.
Second iteration that includes the benefits section.
Inclusion of WP Illustration assets.
The final iteration after refining further
In addition to the email redesign for the redeemer flow, I recognized an opportunity to add the onboarding flow for any new users immediately after they’ve redeemed their gift. This would allow the user to form a relationship while they’re still in the mindset of engaging with the Washington Post, rather than waiting to fill out the onboarding flow later on when they’re browsing or reading.
The main changes that needed to happen were adjusting the confirmation pages based on the user states, which includes a new user and a user who had previously completed the onboarding process. The latter user would be redirected to the home page.
User state: new user directed to the onboarding flow
User state: previously registered user directed to the homepage
To validate the redesigned experience, I conducted A/B tests of the existing and redesigned flows for the gifter and redemption experiences. The following are some of my testing insights:
( 1 ) 5/5 users correctly identified where to put the recipient’s information and their own. 🎉
( 2 ) At the end of the purchasing experience, most users said they would continue to read today’s news.
( 3 ) 5/5 users said the updated confirmation email was very clear and understood why they received it. 🎉
( 4 ) 5/5 users found the new email notifying them that the recipient hasn’t redeemed their gift to be very clear and useful. They felt pleasantly reassured. 🎉
( 5 ) Users felt relieved to receive the email that the recipient has redeemed the gift.
( 1 ) Users were happy to see the email and enjoyed reading the list of subscription benefits. They said that they knew how to redeem their gift, which is a huge improvement from users not knowing how to redeem it and calling the Customer Care department.
( 2 ) Many users appreciated the ability to personalize their Washington Post experience through the subsequent onboarding flow.
After iterating on the designs, updating the user flows, and conducting tests to validate my hypotheses for design improvements, I presented the area of opportunity and my proposed design solutions to Nicole, the Conversion PM. When I presented the design solutions, I identified those that would be considered “low lift” wins, such as changing the copy in the purchasing flow, versus things that might need more resources and effort, such as the implementation of a new email template.
At the time, my PM had a few tickets that were bandaid fixes to things related to the gift subscription experience, but after hearing my identified areas of opportunity and the detrimental impact the experience created, she immediately jumped on board and added the low lift tickets to the roadmap.
From the time that I presented the design solutions to my PM to December 2022, the big wins that have been implemented include: updating the copy on the purchasing checkout page, adding “buy a new gift subscription” and “read news” CTAs to have the user keep engaging with the WP, and adding the onboarding flow for new users.
The implementation of the new email templates will be tackled during the beginning of 2023! Hooray!
Impact x effort matrix to help prioritize and identify the low-lift wins.
( 1 ) The importance of keeping an eye on analytics dashboards to help discover areas of opportunity: In this case, had Ellis and I not looked at the analytics dashboard and looked into the huge discrepancy in the number of people redeeming their gift subscriptions, users will continue to be frustrated and the Washington Post will continue to lose millions of dollars.
( 2 ) I presented the problem with prioritized solutions using an impact versus effort matrix to influence stakeholder buy-in. This approach allowed everyone to converge on the same page and quickly identify big wins and the project’s next steps.
( 3 ) The value of internal analyses: In the Discovery phase of this project, my internal analysis helped me to identify unexpected areas of improvement in addition to the initial usability test insights.
( 4 ) I worked remotely with Ellis and Haley, so finding small ways to make collaboration fun boosted our enthusiasm for the project and went a long way!
Who knew that Figma has a pixel cat plugin?
