Portfolio site - Upgrading the nitro trial payment flow

Upgrading the Nitro trial payment flow

I led a content redesign project that increased Nitro trial redemptions and paid subscriptions.

Before

Background

Discord’s monetization strategy followed a freemium business model. “Nitro,” Discord’s brand of paid subscriptions, accounted for the majority of the company’s revenue. In 2023, subscriptions stagnated and it became clear that we wouldn’t hit our growth goals for the year.

Despite glowing feedback from subscribers, less than 5% of Discord users had Nitro. Researchers investigated the subscription slump and determined that a gap in the conversion funnel was to blame.

Problem

Research uncovered a dramatic drop-off between the awareness and familiarity phases in the Nitro customer journey. Most users were aware that Nitro existed, but didn’t know how it could benefit them.

Surprisingly, this gap was worse for high-frequency users (HFUs). Despite being the most active people on the platform, they were less familiar with Nitro than casual users.

Leadership announced a new tiger team dedicated to closing the familiarity gap. I joined the team as lead content designer.

Frame

To kick things off, my product design partner and I led a two-part brainstorm to align stakeholders on the problem, its causes, and ideate solutions.

Ultimately, the group decided that our initial focus should be increasing offer redemptions for free Nitro trials.

They believed the most effective way to help users understand Nitro’s value was to experience it themselves. But less than 20% of users opted into free trials when offered.

Ideation

When the tiger team was first announced, I started auditing in-product Nitro touchpoints and interactions. After the brainstorm, I organized the audit findings specific to Nitro trials.

I identified four pain points that I believed put trial redemptions and utilization at risk.

Solution

We’d eventually design solutions for all four pain points, but we started with the payment flow. I proposed that we A/B test new content because the current experience was confusing, and likely to dissuade users from sharing their credit card info.

My goal for the variant UX was:

To better support our users’ needs
Educate users without overwhelming them or derailing them from the flow

Our goal for the project was:

To increase trial redemptions by 15%
To increase paid subscriptions (trial conversions) by 5%

Pain points
1. Trial opt-in points
2. Trial payment flow
3. Subscription education
4. Brand trust

Approach

Define

Collaborated with my data partner to design the experiment
Collaborated with my product design and engineering partners to align on requirements and scope
Created user stories

Execute

Developed a content strategy based on the audit, research, and design guidelines
Partnered with legal to understand their requirements, then translated those into user-friendly content
Collaborated with my product design partner to rethink interactions
Experimented with assurance messaging for the trial period, payment, and cancellation
Explored different content patterns and information hierarchies
Designed content for the end-to-end flow on desktop and mobile

Final test UX

Control

Variant

Impact

+19%

Increase in trial redemptions

+11%

Increase in paid subscriptions

Next steps

Due to its success, the variant was rolled out for all trial payment flows and leadership gave us full autonomy over Nitro familiarity experiments. These included tests to resolve the other three trial pain points, which were also successful and shipped.

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