PROJECT
Redesigning the subscription experience for family photo books
ROLE
Senior Product Designer
SUMMARY
I led design across several verticals within the Chatbooks organization. Throughout my time, I helped increase print rate, improved the book edit experience, improved conversion through checkout changes, mentored multiple designers, helped create the newest version of our design system and most recently (and importantly) re-invented the Chatbooks Subscription.
RESULTS
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Generated $10 million per year in subscription GCR growth 2022, 2023 and 2024 by re-thinking subscriptions. We've gone from 9 mil per year in 2022 to 40 mil per year in 2024.
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Added additional products increasing customer satisfaction and LTV
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Added additional payment cadences
Background
From Monthbooks to the new Chatbooks Subscription
The team at Chatbooks has launched Monthbooks, a photo book subscription experience aimed at bringing families closer by encouraging users to print their every day photos.
Monthbooks has shown impressive growth and performance. In 2022, my team successfully increased our Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) from $9 million to $20 million, surpassing $20 million in Gross Cash Receipts (GCR) for subscriptions by the end of the year. However, our ambitious target for the following 2 years was to further increase this number by $10 million each year. (Update Oct 2024 we hit 30 million in ARR in 2023 and are on track for 40 million for 2024)
The Problem(s)
Number of books, subscription understanding, lack of features
While Monthbooks is a valuable offering, it does have certain limitations. These include:
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Too many books
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Strict use case
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Single book size
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Photo selection
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Lack of subscription understanding
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Lack of additional pages and title customization​
In order to address these shortcomings and cater to a wider range of customers, my goal was to develop a solution that not only remedies our current limitations but also creates a product that opens up TAM (Total Addressable Market) by aligning better with diverse customer needs and preferences.
This was the original experience
Goals
User Goal
We want users to have more flexibility with how to use their subscription while also understanding it better.
Business Goal
We want to increase the number of users and users signed up for subscribed plans by ensuring that users can easily choose their options, sign up and seamlessly create their books.
The Results
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Shortened clicks from shop to convert from 10 to 6 taps​ while adding additional options - resulted in revenue increase of 10 mil GCR from end of 2022-2023
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Added variable pages so users could add additional pages to their 30 page books - resulted in 8% increase of past unprinted books
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Added titling to allow for users to use their subscription more flexibly
How I got there
User Research
User research, surveys, prototype testing
Iterations
From wireframes to high fidelity, we created
Strategic Release
My Product Manager and I engaged in strategic planning to determine the optimal approach for releasing the enhanced experience. Our objective was to introduce certain features into our existing subscription, Monthbooks, as a means to gauge their performance while simultaneously developing the new experience.
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After careful consideration, we established the following release schedule:
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Variable pages (add more than 30 pages to a book)
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Titling (allowing user to change the title of the book)
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MVP release (completely new flow)
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Adding additional book sizes & fully decoupling from dates