Pricing page updates

8 min readMay 25, 2017

I am sharing another recent design challenge I was given for a possible role. Below is the challenge, and the guidelines given. I had about a week to complete and deliver my solution.

Title: add a 3rd option to our subscription page

Guidelines: Our current subscription page is one of our most important pages because this is the point of conversion. We are going to be introducing a 3rd plan with an even more limited feature set. The challenge we’re having is figuring out a way to add that 3rd option to our subscription page in the product. As an exercise, I’d love to see your ideas for how we could change the current subscription page in the product to accomplish this.

The challenge you all are trying to solve for is two-fold: increase conversions on this page, and adding a new price point into it as well. However, I think there’s a larger challenge that can be addressed more holistically about pricing and this product, but I will go into that later — this is less of a fully-baked idea and more of a concept I am thinking of.

Link to the designs available upon request.

I am using {newName} as a placeholder for the new pricing plan — I know you mentioned Scheduling & Payments, and if that’s ultimately what you go with, that’d work too.

For the header, I am suggesting bringing the My Account link back, just to make this page feel slightly less like a departure from the normal app. I know why you removed this, as you probably wanted to focus the user solely on conversion (which I agree with), but I’d be curious to see if keeping the account UI makes this less abrasive.

The intro section is similar to the existing UI, but is more contextualized. I wanted to update the title to orient the whole page, and set the users expectations of what to do on the page. I also am including the time remaining on the trial to keep this in their mind, and as the time creeps down, possibly to try to drive some urgency.

The pricing table is the meat of the page, and while there is nothing groundbreaking here (in terms of pricing tables), there are a few interesting updates I am proposing. Since everyone who gets to this page is logged in, I think it’d be smart to personalize this for them, which I am doing in the title of the highlighted plan for them, more on this a bit later. I then broke out the features (not all of them of course, and some are repeated, but you get the idea) and wrote out a short blurb to describe what they are. I am always a fan of just showing the content, and not hiding it behind a tooltip, when there is room to do so. This also allows room to differentiate where the plans differ, and thus why the more expensive ones are more expensive. At the bottom of the table, I am repeating the CTAs (the pricing table header is sticky, which you will see in a later screen), as well as adding in a Learn more link. This is not fully fleshed out, but I think there’s an opportunity for content education to play a part in helping to convert some of the users who don’t see value in the product. For example, perhaps a series of blog posts (using the Jobs to be Done framework) around each plan might help to give users on the fence an aha moment of how they can get more value out of this.

Also, I added a screen (#12) for a possible mobile view of the pricing table in InVision as well =)

The testimonial section is pretty standard, in terms of UI, but not in terms of content. I’d wager there are privacy concerns, but assuming we can find a legal way to share existing users stories, I think it could be a very strong play to use the testimonial to help sell the plan. I.e. if we can focus the content of the testimonial to WHY this particular plan works so well for them, I think that could be a very compelling sell for a user reading this content. We could have only testimonials from users on the same plan as what we’re highlighting (for maximum impact), or we could use 1 of each.

Side-note: I am also suggesting we include chat on this page, and later screens show this. For the CTA, this would just trigger the chat UI. I think chat could be very effective at helping those users who think there is value, but are not quite sure it’s worth the money, or that it’s the right solution for them. We can also include more FAQs in here too — sort of anticipatory design.

And then finally the FAQ section, which I only included 4 questions, but we could have a few more too. Nothing crazy here, but just another way to try to reduce FUDs (fears, uncertainties, doubts) of any users.

Everything after the first screen shows more of the actual prototype flow itself — a few screens show the difference between when a user has a lot of time left (10 thru 29 days), then semi-urgent (4–9 days), and finally urgent (with 3 days or less). Each of which includes a link to open the chat UI.

Now, as I mentioned before, I think there is an opportunity to tackle this problem a bit more holistically. Maybe you all have thought about this, or maybe not — but here’s what I am thinking in a nutshell. When a user is signing up, if we add a second screen to the actual signup flow, there is opportunity to capture more of their intent. If we ask a few more questions like:

How big is your practice? [select from pre-set options]
How many patients do you see on a monthly basis? [select from pre-set options]
How long have you been in practice? [select from pre-set options]

Perhaps not those specific questions, and perhaps not in that order. But, what I am curious about is if we can glean more insights into where this user is in their lifecycle (to sync up with your persona data) so that we can then tailor the onboarding experience more to what they really need from the product. I think if we can meaningfully infer more about them based on these types of questions, we can do a better job of setting them up for success, and thus seeing value in the product quicker. And if we can do that, then asking for them to become a paying customer becomes easier. We can then highlight the exact plan we think they are going to need (i.e. sometimes we suggest the Essential plan, sometimes the Professional, and sometimes the new plan). I’d be curious to see the stakeholder input about this last part: if we can convert more users, but some at lower price points, what does that do to the bottom line, and what does that mean to us as a company.

— — — — — — — — -

Below are notes that I have been taking since starting on this, as well as links I have been collecting while doing research.

Questions that I will assume answers for:

what is the existing conversion rate of each type of subscription?
i.e. does the professional covert better, and if so, does it convert significantly better than the essential? I ask b/c introducing a third option adds complexity to the UI, so what would highlighting the Essential (as the most popular, like many other subscription-based sites/apps) do to the existing conversion rate?
what might this do to the business as whole?
if more users are opting for the essential, then maybe it’s worth it
does the Essential sell itself enough? Not much info about what comes with it
it’s assuming the user is very well versed with what comes in the product up to this point
is there opportunity to get more information about the users practice in the signup flow (just 1 question) that can inform the pre-suggested plan?
reasons for not subscribing — — where did this info come from? most likely a follow-up contact when the trial period ends?
for the users who mentioned price, have you pushed them further to see if the $15 price point might have changed their minds?
how successful is the current onboarding process in converting trials to paying customers?
i.e. what % of these users convert
why do the paying users convert?
is there an AHA moment(s) for them?
which types of users most often convert?
what leads most users to sign-up?
could be many things for different types of users, but this might highlight opportunities once they start using the product to focus on to more quickly show value in the product
for paying users, what were they fearful of when deciding to pay?
this could help uncover some FUD that we could do more educating on for the subscription page
what is the existing workflow of pushing users to upgrade?
outside of them doing this on their own, what triggers are there?
i.e. emails, in-app notifications, SMS, etc.
do paying subscribers care what the plan is called?
or do they just care WHAT is costs + WHAT is included?

Reasons for not subscribing:

They “didn’t have time to learn the software”… which I also take to mean that they did not engage with the product enough to see value in it.

is there opportunity to extend the trial period one time?
if so, maybe we ask them what they really need help with, then refocus the walkthrough process around this specific need(s)

The price is too high
Their practice is too small… also meaning that they cannot justify the price.

notify these expired users about the new price point?

Research & similar-type of UI

Possible updates

urgency for existing trial: how much time left
verbiage for title could be more useful / guiding
for lower price points, show what is included on others with line-through
social proof of WHY to subscribe
how has this app improved other customers business’
how has this solved / alleviated X, Y, or Z
add chat — allow users to get answers right away
interactive UI to help guide you to the right model
how many people in the practice?
how long in business?
monthly revenue?
number of patients
number of recurring
order the price points based on what we know about the user?
i.e. if we know they have X clients, or $X amount in monthly billing, then highlight the Professional plan
lead with comparison UI instead of price-point UI?
FAQs at bottom (links from each feature to here?)
schedule call for each plan — — — — — focus

Future version — rethinking pricing pages

build a UI that allows and encourages users to pick & choose what they need, thus building their own plans
not beholden to pre-defined packages, price-points

Pricing page updates

Written by Jeff Doan