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Goal: Increasing Subscription Revenue for The Times Digital Newspaper
Product Vision | Market Research | Competitor Analysis | Customer Segmentation | UX/UI Optimisation | MVP Design
Understanding The Times mission and problem statement
The Times newspaper is known for its commitment to quality journalism, and focuses on delivering reliable and high-quality journalism that is well-researched and unbiased. As mentioned on their website, their mission is to ‘help audiences make decisions based on trusted information’ while ‘promoting a fair society, freedom of speech and a little bit of fun’.
Problem statement - Increase revenue through increased subscriptions. In regards to that, this case study covers the following:
Current offering
User segmentation
User pain points
Solutions
Current Offerings of The Times
Current Offerings of The Times
The Times high-level features and subscription offerings
User registration with Apple or Google sign in, or simply by email
Navigation bar at the top has a ‘Today’s sections’ button which presents you the categories they report on.
‘Past six days’ which provides you with a list of the past 6 days, and clickable thumbnails under each date for each news category.
‘Explore’ button which has a slightly different selection of categories to the Navigation bar such as ‘Business & Money’, ‘Politics’ and ‘Life & Style’
Subscription Plans:
Display and explain various subscription plans.
Allow users to choose and subscribe to either a smartphone-only access Basic plan, a Digital plan, and a Digital + Print physical newspaper plan
Provide options for billing cycles (monthly, yearly, etc.).
Trial Periods or Free Trials
Allow users to experience the service with a trial period before committing to a subscription.
Clicking "Subscribe" on The Times website offers three options, including a one-month free trial and a £3 for three months deal. However, the homepage fails to clearly convey The Times' value, raising doubts about user confidence and subscription conversion. To improve, we must better articulate the brand's mission of delivering high-quality journalism.
User segmentation
It’s important to understand the possible user personas and segment them in order to best direct our focus on the group where our impact would be most significant.
Front book vs back book users
Back book users: As existing users, we might be able to have the most success with converting them into digital subscribers (if they use the physical print), or paying for the higher subscription as they already see value in the product.
We can segment our back book users into two groups - those who use the digital offering, and those who use the physical print offering. From research, physical print users only pay £3 a week, and converting them to at least the Basic subscription plan would increase this to £3.50 a week per user.
Next, we analyse demographic data like age, gender, location, and occupation/income levels for both groups, along with how they access The Times (mobile/desktop/tablet or print). Understanding these details enables us to identify potential pain points and needs of current print users, informing strategies to convert them into digital subscribers.
Front book users: we can segment our new users into a similar way to back book, by looking at the demographic data, their access to The Times and narrowing down to a group where the impact would be higher (i.e. those who look for daily news updates more frequently) and focus on engagement and retention in order to eventually become long-term back book users.
Although it is useful to delve deep into the segmentations, for the purposes of this case study, I have thought of the following 3 types of general users:
In this scenario, the primary user segment to consider for The Times' value proposition is business professionals. Their need for timely, well-researched, unbiased information aligns with what The Times offers, making it essential for their work. These users value staying ahead with news updates, making them a key focus for our efforts moving forward.
User Pain Points
User Pain Points
Customer journey pain points and competitor analysis
Before identifying possible pain points, let’s look at the overall view of the customer journey using the diagram below:
Information search (search engine)
As shown in the diagram, once a problem is recognised by the user, the next step is information search which typically happens on search engines such as Google. As per 2023 data by HubSpot on consumer trends, search engines still dominate when it comes to information research by consumers across all generations.
Targeting business professionals, we anticipate they'd search for keywords like 'world news,' 'business news,' 'politics news,' and 'daily newspaper' for reliable information. Despite ranking 6th for 'daily newspaper,' The Times struggles to appear on the first page for other key terms on Google. While improving search rankings could drive more traffic, our focus in this case is identifying pain points in the customer journey.
We'll benchmark against three competitors to uncover these pain points.
In comparison to competitors, The Times lags in subscription ease, user interface & experience, and breaking news coverage. Competitors excel in promptly delivering breaking news on their homepages, utilising clear 'Live' tags or attention-grabbing red backgrounds to signify urgency and high-quality content. Additionally, the subscription process at The Times involves more steps compared to competitors.
Considering the above, these three pain points would be critical to address for our business professional target customers' journey:
Prioritising Pain Points
Prioritising Pain Points
When prioritising the resolution of pain points and crafting solutions for specific issues, I find it beneficial to assess the following factors for each point:
Business impact: the effect a pain point has on the overall goals, objectives, and success of the business. It can include factors like revenue, market share, customer acquisition, and brand reputation.
User impact: extent to which a pain point affects the end-users of your product. This includes aspects such as user satisfaction, usability, and the overall user experience.
Cost: refers to the resources, both in terms of time and money, required to address a particular pain point. It includes development costs, operational expenses, and any potential impact on the product roadmap.
I rated each pain point below from 1 to 10 based on the factors mentioned above.
Total of benefits, minus cost = final score for that pain point
The third pain point, concerning the inefficiency of the subscription page, emerges as the top priority due to its potential impact on revenue. While addressing this may pose moderate to somewhat challenging efforts, particularly with features like Apple/Google payment systems, the potential positive impact on revenue and user experience justifies the investment.
Current Customer Journey from Home Page to Subscription as Highlighted in Red
Problem Hypothesis
As highlighted in the competitor analysis, it currently requires five clicks to reach the payment page from the homepage. More steps increase the likelihood of user drop-off. Assuming the highest drop-out occurs during Account Setup, where users navigate through a four-page process to subscribe to The Times. With this assumption, we have our problem hypothesis:
We've identified a potential bottleneck in The Times subscription journey, particularly the 5-click process. Our hypothesis is that by optimising and trimming down the subscription pages and making value more visible, we can create a smoother user experience, reducing friction for business professionals who may be pressed for time when deciding on whether or not to subscribe to a news source. This, in turn, is expected to positively impact subscriber numbers, contributing to an overall improvement in the revenue metric.
Solutions
Solutions
To brainstorm solutions for our hypothesis, I have thought of three types of ideas: an ‘OK’ idea, a ‘Best idea’, and a ‘Blue-sky’ idea:
Designing our MVP
My final recommendation to increase subscriptions based on moderate engineering complexity and impact on the target customers as well as the business, would be to implement the in line form directly on articles, on a pop-up panel on the right-side of the article where the customers will have the necessary subscription packages explained, as well as a section to input card details, or to use Apple/Google Pay.
Below I have created a wireframe using Canva of how the inline form would look like:
Wireframe
Features of the inline form
This inline form will be in the form of a collapsible panel on the right-side
It will present the most popular subscription package which is the Digital package
It will explain more information on what’s included in the subscription
It will explain what happens after the free trial ends
It will include the following payment options depending on the device type:
Apple Pay
Google Pay
Card details form
Mock-up
Below is a final mock-up of how it would look like on the website once it is implemented. If you are not a subscriber, the inline form panel will pop-up when attempting to view an article.
Product Requirement Document
Product Requirement Document
Overview:
Overview:
The objective of this feature is to streamline the subscription process on The Times website by introducing an inline form as a collapsible panel on the right side when viewing articles. The focus will be on promoting the Digital subscription package with essential information on what the package includes, and providing three quick payment options depending on device type.
Feature Overview:
Feature Overview:
Implement an inline form on the right side of articles to facilitate immediate subscription to the digital newspaper service using various payment options including Apple Pay, Google Pay, and card details entry.
The inline form will be collapsible, appearing as a panel on the right side of the article.
It will prominently present the Digital subscription package, explaining its features and benefits.
It will provide information on what's included in the subscription.
Explanation of what happens after the free trial ends will be provided.
Payment options will vary depending on the device type: Apple Pay, Google Pay. However, all devices will still have a card details form. (See wireframe)
Prioritisation Matrix
Feature List
Collapsible panel UI
Subscription package info
Payment options UI
Subscription form logic
Payment processing logic
Integration with articles
Subscription tracking
Analytics tracking
Usability testing
UI refinement based on feedback
Metrics to Track
User engagement: the level of interaction of users with the subscription inline form
Conversion rate: the percentage of users who complete the subscription form using the inline form panel implemented
Revenue from new subscribers: the total revenue generated from users who subscribe through the inline form.
Time to subscription: the average time it takes for a user to complete the subscription process.
Bounce rate: the percentage of users who navigate away from the page after viewing the inline form without subscribing
Subscriptions after the free trial: this is to see how many users continue their subscription even after the free trial. A low retention rate would mean the subscription offering may not offer enough value for the users to continue, and may call for a focus on the quality of the articles or improved marketing.
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