Unpacking UXfolio’s new monetization strategy

Around this time last year, UX studio’s amazing UX researcher, Borbala German, conducted a large-scale, evaluative research into the state of our flagship product UXfolio, testing the product with existing and potential users. She concluded that there are three primary areas we need to improve, one of them being the “premium experience.” Turns out that our monetization strategy was working against us, and not for us. So we embarked on one of the largest individual projects in UXfolio’s history.

Identifying problems and setting goals

Once the large-scale  UX audit unveiled this issue, we established UXfolio’s “Premiums team,” consisting of a product designer, Sian Williams, and a developer,  Dávid Mehari. Their objective was to dig deeper into this issue and develop the solution.

To kick things off, Sian conducted user interviews focusing only on the premium experience as well as an in-depth competitor analysis, documenting the premium experience of all of our competitors with screenshots and recordings.

Based on all the available data, we pinpointed the following problems:

User problems:

• Monetization model too restrictive
• Upgrade prompts had high friction
• Users were underwhelmed after upgrading

Business problems:

• Existing subscription model had never been validated
• Conversion rates were declining

Based on these, we set the following goals for the team:

1. Increase conversion rates by 20%.
2. Identify the best-performing subscription model.
3. Improve satisfaction among paying users.

A brutally honest look at our issues

All the data we collected forced us to take a brutally honest look at our existing pricing strategy and how it had been communicated. I’d like to give context to some of the main issues we had:

1. No way to get to know the product

Yes, there was a Free plan, but it didn’t allow users to actually get a feeling of our product. The reason being that every little customization option, even a font change, was locked behind a paywall. Yes, you could have 1 public portfolio and 1 public case study, but almost zero customization options. This way, users felt forced into the Premium plan, since there was no other option to get a feel of the actual UXfolio experience. And because of this, many users abandoned the product.

2. The most annoying paywall

What worsened this situation was that our paywall appeared when the user tried to save the customization changes they had made. Meaning that sometimes they have spent minutes tinkering with fonts only to meet a pricing table when they were finally happy with the outcome. No wonder this was “annoying” and “frustrating” to them.

3. Never seeing the big picture

It might seem otherwise, but this solution was born with good intentions: we wanted users to be able to try the customization options to see the potential of UXfolio. The issue was that since they couldn’t save anything, the only way for them to examine customization options in UXfolio was in isolation: I try a different font, but I can’t save it. Now, I try a different font color but I can only try it on the default font, since I couldn’t save my choice. And so on. Users didn’t have the opportunity to see what they can create with UXfolio.

4. Confusing pricing page

The UX research also found that our pricing page is leaving visitors and users confused. The Monthly and Yearly payment options were unclear for them and some of our Premium features were worded too vaguely. In general, they wanted more information about the plans and the features available in them.

5. Zero premium experience

Finally, we found that our Premium users don’t really feel or see the difference after upgrading. First of all, they’ve already tried everything (they just couldn’t save). Second, even more importantly, after the payment there was no Premium onboarding (or anything, really) to elevate the moment and highlight what they’ve just paid for.

Then the questions and doubts came

This is all great, but we had a few doubts before jumping into working out the solutions.

But this bad model has worked very well…

Yes, our monetization strategy was objectively annoying — we were also frustrated while using the free version of the product — but this was the strategy that turned this product into a success. What’s more, for years we have produced splendid numbers with it. Besides, as the product’s marketer, for a great while I was the one pushing for more pricing tables. 

We just had to realize that strategies, like other things, have become outdated. Things that work in a certain era with certain circumstances don’t work in another. And we could already see that it wasn’t working anymore. We needed to adapt.

How do we convert free users?

We learned that the pricing tables were annoying our users. That was clear. But this presented us with a challenge: wouldn’t removing them or making them more sparse lead to lower conversion rates due to less conversion triggers? We are a business, so we have to balance user and business interests. This question was a huge determining factor in how we approached this opportunity: instead of more triggers, we aimed for more strategic ones (more on this later).

Freemium vs Trial

Our research concluded that UXfolio’s freemium monetization strategy was not working anymore. So we had to figure out what we should do: a freemium or a trial model.

Based on our findings, users preferred a Freemium model instead of the trial. However, we had a feeling that things were not as simple as they had seemed. Things just weren’t adding up in their elaborations and descriptions as to why and what exactly. No wonder. After all, there are so many different variations on freemium and trial models. For example, nobody likes a “free” trial where you have to provide card details.

After plenty of thinking and strategizing, we've arrived at the conclusion that the proof is in the pudding: we would test both. We wanted to choose a strategy that could stand for a few years, and we had to do everything we could to find the best one.

A/B testing pricing plans?

Initially, we planned an A/B test: developing both plans and testing them side by side. Some users would be getting the trial version of the product, others the freemium version. However, with our resources, this just wasn’t viable. We could’ve prepared the test but it would’ve added weeks or months to an already lengthy roadmap, not to mention all the additional complexities. Therefore, we decided to test the strategies after each other:

• Release the Trial for 3 weeks, then release the Freemium for 3 weeks
• Release them at the same time of the month, to give them equal fighting chance.

For our team setup —with only one developer working on it— this was the way to go.

Defining the strategies

At this point, it was time for us to define the two strategies. We decided that two things will remain behind the paywall for good. We chose these two things in a very strategic way: they had to be undisruptive for the portfolio editing experience, yet they had to be strong enough triggers to drive conversions. These were:

• Portfolio and UX case study publishing
  
  • Users could build a complete portfolio with any customization option. However, they could only publish it after upgrading.
  • Based on the criticism we received, we made sure that this was  clearly communicated from the get go.
  • Password protection and Reviews were a residue of blocking publishing, since there was  no point in setting passwords for draft portfolios or case studies, and users couldn’t get reviews on drafts back then.
• Domain support
  
  • We’ve seen that our competitors are promoting domains in a very prominent way to free users.
  • When we looked at our statistics, we could see why: most premium users will want to use domains with their portfolios for a professional touch.

The main difference between the two strategies was that the Trial included an element of time pressure, since we decided that we will provide a 7-day free trial. We went with 7 days because our past research and experience showed that this should be enough for anyone to build a portfolio, or at least a draft of it.

Besides these, both the Freemium and the Trial plans were free for all. This approach solved 2 of our problems:

1. No way to get to know the product: now free users could try 99% of the product.
2. Never seeing the big picture: now free users could save and see the changes they make cumulatively.

Substituting the paywalls

We had to get rid of the annoying paywalls and substitute them with more elegant conversion triggers. So we decided to add simple, elegant triggers and upgrade nudges in the product:

• To the monetized features (publishing, domain support, password protection, and reviews).
• An upgrade link to the Account toolbar.
• A ribbon to the bottom of the editor that also showed how much time the user had left of the free trial.

Our main conversion point turned out to be one that didn't even exist before: Portfolio publishing. In the portfolio editor, 51,4% of our conversions came from this trigger alone. The rest was distributed between the other triggers. That was already a huge win.

This solved issue number 2: The most annoying paywall.

Elaborating on our plans

To solve the issue of our confusing pricing page, we did two things:

1. Copy updates
2. Expanded pricing table

Our marketer, Fanni Szalkai,  refined the copy of the pricing page, making the wording as clear as possible without making the copy too long. We elaborated on the copy and the design based on user tests.

On top of this, based on our competitor analysis, we added an expanded pricing table under the main one. This gave us an opportunity to elaborate on our feature set, providing extra explanation via tooltips.

This solved issue number 4: confusing pricing page.

Creating a premium experience

To solve the lack of premium experience, we decided to add a small element of surprise right after payment, to express our happiness and gratitude towards our new subscribers (this element shall remain a surprise). 

Furthermore, we added a premium onboarding screen showing the main features that were unlocked by the subscriber (publishing, domains, etc.) Based on the user feedback, this reinforced the value of their subscriptions.

The numbers are in

We ran the tests as planned, and we had an overwhelming winner: the trial plan. It appears that the addition of the slight time pressure really helped our conversions. During the trial’s run, our conversion rate grew by a whopping 94,63%, which is almost 5x of the 20% we aimed for. (The new freemium strategy was also a success with a 42.95% growth in conversion rate.)

Next steps

During the development of the strategies, we had to shelve a lot of ideas because of time constraints. Thankfully, Sian and David kept track of these, and now we’re planning a Trial V2 with a few of them added for an even more polished effect.

What about your product strategy? 

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