For years, upgrading to a higher subscription tier on Later was a complex, multi-step process that disrupted users' core task of scheduling social posts. Our goal is to streamline the in-app checkout experience and help users easily access the benefits Later offers for social media management.
Before the redesign, the checkout was a critical bottleneck, with 40% of users abandoning their purchases at the final step.
Impact 1
Impact 2
Impact 3
How can eliminate bottlenecks and ensure a seamless upgrade experience for users?
The upgrade paths for self-serve customers disrupted core scheduling tasks on Later, requiring users to abandon their progress. Saving in-progress work was discussed as an improvement with other teams, but the scope was too large to further pursue.
More new users were struggling with the feature upgrades, spending >2 minutes before abandoning. In comparison, advanced users typically upgrade their plans via Settings, knowing what they want to get out of the purchase.*
*Based on monitoring checkout usage across two user categories (new vs. experienced users) in a 90-day period on FullStory.
😪 Pain Point
An further analysis on the frustration
We developed a new hypothesis that we can achieve a smoother flow by eliminating a few intermediary steps before the checkout. To validate this, we used several different strategies to gain more insight.
A/B Test Results
Hypothesis:
The redesign and new flow will increase conversion by 10%
Results:
+38%
new trial starts
1.17 min
avg. spend time on checkout before completion
Next Steps:
Full app-wide rollout of the redesign
Continue with usage monitoring
Together with the product trio, we decided to A/B test the checkout redesign, focusing on the trial start flow from the post builder and home navigation. We wanted to measure the redesign's impact before committing to a full-app rollout.
The existing checkout page's structure had several problems, mainly around information redundancy and unclear hierarchy. I worked with the UI engineer on a checkout audit to reorganize and regroup content, refine the visual hierarchy, and eliminate redundant steps in the payment process.
ITERATIONS BEFORE DEVELOPMENT
Free users were dropping off during upgrades with the unneeded multi-step flow. My goal was to streamline the process so that the checkout and upgrade plan snapshot would become more contextual to the user's core workflow.
We reused existing components but also designed various new modal wireframes. After gathering feedback from the design team, we refined the mockups and aligned with developers to tackle any technical challenges early on.
Doing a phased rollout allowed us to be nimble
We launched the new checkout to all customers in 2022. The feature was widely received by Later's leadership team and wouldn't have been possible if we weren't able to test and iterate. The other feature teams praised the new checkout modal as well, voicing excitement with the flexibility of a modal over a page-based checkout.
Learnings:
Properly scoped implementation and design efforts ensured smooth collaboration
Leveraging defaults simplified decision-making
Next Steps:
Consider digital payment platforms like Apple Pay and Google Pay for a secure and contactless subscription purchase
Evaluate the use case of offering AI credits as a purchasable add-on
