5 design principles to boost your subscription income
The practice of subscription monetization is a mainstream business model for modern internet companies to profit from their accumulated app value. For any companies, the full life cycle of subscription monetization includes three stages: perception, conversion, and repurchase.
After studying several of the subscription system designs worldwide, here we conclude 5 design principles to help you quickly understand some of the basic strategies of subscription design that best help your company to attract subscribers, and gain more money of course.
Superiority
To make your subscriber feel they’re different from other “free” users, you have to emphasize the superior rights or self-identification which are only available to those who are paying for this application. YOUKU, a video&entertainment platform from China, creates the value of membership through their member image and upgraded rights and have built a lot more “value resonance” for the brand.
Here is this brand new and young UI of YOUKU membership which strengthens the customized style of “membership card” and externalizes its VIP rights to establish a close relationship with users. Hence enhance the sense of acquisition and special treatment, at the same time strengthen the user’s sense of identity and the explicitness of rights.
Richness
Every product designer is always exploring how users can have a stronger perception of the rights they are about to have after the subscription. VSCO has provided an example of how to enrich user’s awareness of subscription rights through the design of its subscription page. Unlike those who throw only a price package, VSCO has made a slidable style on the subscription page, which greatly displays the specific content of each subscriber’s rights.
It’s not over, on the membership page, various membership rights are also displayed as card layouts, which allows users to jump to a specific function and try it out directly simply by tapping on it.
Cost Saving
We see discount options in almost every subscription page. What’s the best way to make users feel they’re actually saving money?
By visualizing the amount of discount savings and presenting the benefits to the user, we are able to gain subscriptions from swing users easily. The subscription page from Tinder and Facetune2 shows the exact amount of savings, which makes it easy for users to opt for longer subscriptions with a lower price per month.
Secondly, you can offer a free trial to new users. After all, we never know until we try! Let them experience high-quality subscription products. It’s much easier to keep them once their habits are developed. In the free trial pages of VSCO and Canva , they both highlight the specific benefits of subscription, which gives users a real sense of the distinction.
In addition, when users are sure to subscribe, you should focus on the “last push”. Set a default option (shown below) and highlight the discount again. Users will be dead set on paying for it.
Loss Avoidance
Loss-avoidance seizes users’ fear of losing and stimulates them to place an order. In the case of Pixaloop, users are allowed to try the premium functions for free first. When they want to export the work, those who’s not yet a member find their work being covered with a hateful shadow. They could either choose to give up all the actions they’ve already done or purchase a subscription right now. Finally, users have no choice but to pay for it to avoid losing what they’ve accomplished.
Growth
You can design a membership growth system for your subscribers as their subscribing length and depth accumulated. For different levels of membership, set up the exclusive member image and entitlements correspondingly can build a sense of satisfaction of growth.
Alipay, a payment platform from China, has set a good example for us in the design of member upgrade system. Ali designers have designed exclusive icons for each level and have endowed them with different characters and emotions, allowing users to realize that they can enjoy exclusive privileges on each level. It will be conducive to lead users to upgrade their membership.
When you think you’ve done everything already, check this out. It can probably make your product even better.
