Subscription creation redesign

Overview

My role

Product designer

My team

Molly Hodson (product designer), Patrick Lewis (head of design)

Industry

Creator subscription platform (B2B2C SaaS)

Timeline

Q1 2022–Q2 2022

Problem

Creators on Subkit had difficulty launching their first subscription plan and required ongoing support from our community team to get from account creation to earning revenue through Subkit. Creators felt there was a lack of clarity when it came to understanding the relationship between products and subscription plans during plan creation and inputs calling for product details were misaligned with user’s mental models of virtual product listings.

Screenshots of the product before our redesign.

Solution

We redesigned the subscription plan creation flow to better elucidate how products fit within subscription plans, including infrastructure to support product description pages to better market value offered by creators within their plans. Additionally, we built in-app guidance for new creators by asking for readily available information and providing expertise on best practices for novel fields that would require more contemplation such as plan pricing.

Clear context and navigation

We added guidance to help creators understand where they were in the process and what steps lay ahead, particularly before the crucial product addition phase.

Image of the final design solution highlighting clear context of products within a plan.

Enhanced product showcase

We developed dedicated product description pages, giving creators the tools to effectively market and demonstrate the value of their offerings to potential subscribers.

Operational foresight

We integrated proactive planning tools that help creators think through critical business constraints upfront - from production capacity and order deadlines to delivery methods and pickup options. This ensures creators launch with sustainable plans that they can confidently fulfill.

Discovery

Background

When looking at the numbers, it was clear our onboarding wasn’t driving results. Out of 600+ signups to Subkit, only 52 creators (internally referred to as "providers") launched plans that were making money. Additionally, most creators with successfully launched plans required a lot of support from our community team to get from account creation to their first dollar. Though we had our educated guesses (internally) about what could be improved, we wanted creators to walk us through plan creation and understand where they were hitting a wall and why before we tried to revamp the entire experience.

Screenshots showing product usage, specifically the number of creators (internally referred to as "providers" (605) and the number of creators earning revenue (52).

Usability testing

We conducted usability tests, having users create an account on Subkit and walk us through how they would go about creating a subscription plan. Afterwards, we were able to define addressable pain points that creators experienced.

Defining user pain points

A major pain point in subscription plan creation stemmed from users' fundamental mental model: they understood subscription plans as a way to offer goods or services on a recurring basis. However, the subscription plan creation form failed to align with this understanding. Users struggled to identify where to input these goods or services, as the label "Features" wasn't immediately recognizable as the place for products.

The confusion went beyond mere semantics. Users expected more comprehensive input options for each good or service, rather than just a single text field. While the plan preview card eventually helped users realize that "Features" meant products within the plan, they were left wondering why there wasn't more space to properly describe or showcase these products.

This misalignment became even more apparent for users who approached subscriptions with a tiered model in mind. They found it unintuitive to specify product quantities in a way that would allow our backend to effectively compare and highlight the different value propositions across their plan tiers.

An image showing screenshots of the "before" product highlighting user pain points.

Mapping creator & subscriber mental models

Going back to mental models, I wanted to start from a subscriber's point of view to consider what information would be compelling to drive sales. Since each subscriber-facing output would be displayed as an input to creators, I mapped out how stores, subscription plans, and products related to one another.

The store information was to let subscribers know why they should buy from a certain creator– whether that meant expertise or seller ethos, this gave creators a chance to sell themselves. Next was the subscription plan– this was an opportunity for creators to showcase the bundled recurring value held within their plans. One store could offer many subscription plans, but since our goal was to help users get from 0-1, we built infrastructure to support tiered plans in the future, but didn't go into details with creating that for this iteration. Lastly, we got to the most nested component of a plan which was the product. Products were what customers sought most from plans, aside from discounted value they would get on a recurring basis. We wanted to make products stand out and allow creators to market the value contained in their subscription plans in the most effective way.

A graphic showing the nested relationship between a store, subscription plan, and products.

Design

Inspiration

Due to the nested nature of our users' mental models, we looked for examples of nested wizards that broke complex forms down into easy-to-follow user experiences.

Turbotax

Using Turbotax as inspiration due to their clear, stepwise wizard, we jokingly referred to our subscription plan creation redesign as “Turbo-kit” (a hybrid of Turbotax and Subkit).

What we admired most about Turbotax was their ability to effectively break apart a complex whole into neat segments so users could focus on each segment at a time. We wanted to do this with the many pieces of a subscription plan.

User flows

Moving forward, we mapped out our initial user flow while to ensure a clear and intuitive path for our creators to follow while creating their first subscription plan.

Proposing an update to our user flow

During the design phase, we uncovered a key insight: fulfillment needed to happen at the product level, not the plan level. This realization came from understanding that creators would offer various types of products within a single plan—from digital content libraries to session-based activities. Having fulfillment tied to individual products rather than the entire plan would create a more flexible and intuitive system.
‍
To demonstrate the issue of fulfillment scheduling on a plan level, I created a visual that showed how regrouping these concepts would minimize unnecessary context switching between products and plans. This helped illustrate how we could streamline the user experience by aligning our system's structure with how creators naturally thought about delivering their offerings to subscribers.

The revised approach meant creators could focus on how they'd deliver each product individually, rather than trying to figure out plan-wide fulfillment that didn't match their mental model of how their business operated.

Wireframes

We created mobile wireframes, ensuring the progression of the form for subscription plan creation felt intuitive and made chronological sense. We also wanted to make sure our user flow was built out with intention, addressing pain points and helping creators build a successful subscription plan. When moving to higher fidelity design, we created mobile, tablet, and desktop screens.

Empowering users through guided plan creation

To enhance user confidence and streamline the subscription creation process, we implemented a step-by-step wizard with clear progress indicators. Each completed section ends with a positive confirmation message, while new sections begin with contextual guidance. This structured approach helps first-time users navigate complex decisions with greater assurance and clarity.

Offering a clear path forward

We broke up the subscription flow with contextual guidance to keep users moving forward confidently. Whether they're defining products or reviewing order timelines, key information is highlighted prominently to reinforce important details and help them make informed decisions for their business.

Celebrating user progress

Each completed step is acknowledged with encouraging feedback, building user confidence throughout the journey. The final celebration screen confirms their success and sets clear expectations for what comes next.

Final designs

Prototype

Next steps

Measuring impact

Although I started a new job before development was fully complete, we identified key metrics for assessing our subscription creation experience. The primary metric would be the ratio of new user sign-ups to plans generating revenue through Subkit. More critically, we aimed to analyze user drop-off points within the new design to inform potential improvements.

Future development

Product inventories and plan tiers

The next design projects we planned to work on was the creator dashboard infrastructure to support a product inventory and plan tiers. This would enable convenient reuse of products from existing launched plans, facilitating the creator experience of launching subsequent subscription plans and plan tiers.

Content library infrastructure

To enhance subscription plan capabilities, we planned on developing content libraries that create dual value streams. For providers, this would open new revenue opportunities by leveraging existing digital assets, while subscribers gain access to exclusive, continuously updated content that extends value beyond physical deliveries.

What I learned

Strive to learn more about broader user processes to build better products.

By being curious and asking creators about their day-to-day processes, we realized our product didn't align with their existing opterations. We learned about was how some creators need lead time to physically prepare their products; this finding led us to consider subscriber cut-off times and propose plan limits. These insights helped us design solutions that better aligned with creator workflows.

Subscription plan creation redesign