subscription management app

How mobile first design improve user retention

Role: Lead product designer

Device: iOS

Duration: 2 months

Tools: Figma

Genie is a subscription manager.

The business problem

Genie has an alpha version on desktop and it's not mobile friendly. Not having a mobile first solution is not just an accessibility problem for current users. It is an acquisition problem for business. The desktop version also has low conversion rate.

The business goals

Improve acquisition, retention and accessibility.
To create a mobile first solution and improve user flow.

User goals

Be able to manage all subscriptions quickly anytime and anywhere.

84% of Americans don't know how many subscription services they have

As a result, users lost track of their finances. This creates a business opportunity to generate revenue for helping users manage their subscription spending.

Market size is expected to grow to USD $7.8B by 2025

What's driving the growth?

Growth of Subscription Models

Customer Demand for Flexibility

Market Demand for Agility

Customer Retention

Data Security and Regulatory Compliance

92% of younger Americans have active subscription services

Many younger people have thousands of dollars of student loan payment. They don't have the lump sums for large payments, they prefer to buy on a month-to-month basis.

What are they buying by subscriptions?

Clothing, cosmetics, wine and beer, shaving supplies, musical instruments, and even cars.

Research synthesis: One platform to track anytime and anywhere

The value of a subscription management service is being able to offer one platform for users to track and manage all their subscription spending.Although most online financial institutions offer services to analyze users’ spending, users are only limited to manage their finances within the bank. They are not able to have an overview when they have accounts with multiple banks. This can result in an incomplete picture of their overall spending. A subscription manager must offer a clear overview of all users' monthly/annual spendings in detail.
Users must enter their bank financial logins in order to pull their spending records. Users don’t have an option to enter their subscriptions manually - traditionally, they would only enter amounts they remember which negates the true meaning behind the service: to find overlooked spending and offer an overview of their subscription spending.
Users are skeptical when they are asked to enter bank logins. The trust can be built by using a trusted third party to obtain their logins, good user reviews, provide exclaimer at the time the logins are requested, and having clear user flows and UI.
To cancel subscriptions, logins to specified subscriptions must be provided. That’s the only way to cancel a subscription. Otherwise, users can cancel on their own.
Notifications is a key feature. Users only login when something goes wrong.

Identifying root problems

Truebill is the most complete competitor

Here are the three reasons.

Truebill offers basic service at no cost.Unlike Trim charging users $99 annually after 14 days trail, True bill offers basic free service option provides more opportunities to get users to try out their products. To upgrade, users are offered to pay a small amount ranging from $3/month and it can be canceled anytime
Truebill doesn't required users to manually enter data. Unlike TrackMySubs, Truebill pull data directly from users’ banks to avoid mistakes and overwhelm users with too much data entry
Truebill offers both mobile app and mobile web. Mobile first solution is essential to subscription management service. Mobile app also offers additional communication through mobile notifications.

Truebill user flow screens

Persona & Storyboard

Let's learn about Sophia's journey with Genie

User goals for Sophia

I want to...

...have a quick overview of all my current subscriptions

...be notified of all my upcoming auto-renewals that I can decide whether to renew or cancel

...be able to cancel subscriptions are no longer needed

Minimal Viable Product

A mobile app that enable users to manage all their subscriptions

The MVP would consist of a native mobile app where users would have an onboarding process that gathers users spendings data from their banks, automatically identify all subscriptions and their pay schedule, and notify users for all upcoming auto-renewed payments.

Ideation

Red route begins with screen lock notification

Identified 4 major screens

Lockscreen notification to notify users about their upcoming auto-renew
Upcoming subscription payment schedule overview
All subscriptions overview that allows users easily to review and cancel unwanted subscriptions
Call to action Cancel button screen

Learned users want to go straight to their goal

From screen lock notification, users want to go straight to view the payment history and to cancel, not other upcoming renewals.

Before

After

Learned users want confirmation and acknowledgement

**Users need a confirmation screen after users click cancel. I added a new confirmation screen below.**

Users want direct and straight forward information

The multiple rounds of A/B testings guided me to design version #6 to provide clean and effective information to users.

Users were not sure about when the service would stop after they canceled it

Therefore, I added a pop-up message stating how many more days left in version "After".

Styling the high fidelity

Low fidelity

High fidelity