The Guardian

Skyrocketing user engagement and conversion

How we did it

Re-designed Sign in and Registration journeys to reduce churn;

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Promoted Sign in and Registration;
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Improved onboarding journeys through a set of experimentations to reach a sweet spot between user and business needs;

Increased number of newsletters sign up by more than 300% leading to an increase in conversion

Secret to success

Design; Product management; Marketing; Content; Copywriting; Data privacy; Data analysis; Development.

Cross team work

Several rounds of moderated and unmoderated usability testing around registration & sign in; onboarding; data privacy; cookies; content.

Usability testing

Several live A/B tests on the onboarding journey to assess performance of different experiments.

Experimentation

Ran a series of ideation sessions backed by research to generate ideas to test using several research methods, such as Live A/B tests and Smoke tests.

Ideation sessions & workshops

Sitting across many different projects at the Guardian gave me a holistic view of the whole user experience allowing me to understand the relationships, interactions, and interdependencies of its various elements.

Systems thinking

Context

The redesign of the registration & onboarding journeys was the foundational work for a set of initiatives to deliver value to readers and increase direct and indirect revenue through user engagement.

I led design on this project, and other related projects, such as personalisation, which greatly benefited from having an improved registration and onboarding experience.

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Access user first party data
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Increase the uptake of Guardian products such as newsletters and marketing emails.

Business goals

Account and data securely created and stored;

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Seamless flows;
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Personal data usage transparency;
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Relevant content
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User needs

The problem

Authentication journeys

Existing registration and sign in journeys had usability problems and security loopholes.

I ran a round of usability testing on the existing designs and fully audited all the more than 60 possible journeys, helping the team to surface even more scenarios where account safety was being compromised.

Onboarding journey

Every department wanted a bit of real estate on the onboarding journey. 

This led to an overwhelming amount of content, spread into two very long pages.

Surfacing these issues through research and negotiating with the different departments was part of my role and detrimental to the success of this project.

Approach & Solutions

We ran these two projects in parallel and took different approaches for each.

For the Registration journeys I mapped all the existing scenarios and user states so we knew what we had to cater for, discovering new security loopholes in the process.

I then redesigned the flows based on 2 rounds of usability testing which culminated in a clearer experience for users.

For delivery I supported the team throughout four MVPs as we had to gradually migrate all users to the new system.

(images: Excel file with all the possible authentication journeys. On the bottom right, three stages of the registration screen: one of the first iterations; a usability test, and the final version).

For the onboarding journey, I started by designing an initial version to address some of the main usability problems.

On the first iteration, simply by breaking the information into steps, and reducing some of the asks, we already saw an increase of more than 100% of newsletters sign up.

I kept iterating with the different departments to fix more usability issues while working with visual designers to simplify the design further; and working with data privacy to improve content and copy.

I ran ideation sessions and, along with the team, defined several experiments to assess through live A/B testing. For this I collaborated closely with developers and data analysts.

(Images: different iterations of the onboarding journey)

Final notes

My contribution to this project went beyond the design and implementation of these flows. It increased team’s knowledge of their users and it surfaced other problems to tackle.

It laid the ground for other projects which I also led, such as personalisation and new business models, to increase user engagement, and, per consequence, revenue.

Some nice words from my team

“We are totally indebted to your skills, patience and hard work. Our readers are so so so lucky that the sign in and registration had all your careful attention to detail.” - Jess Lane, Group Product Manager, the Guardian

“You helped us wrangle very complex requirements into wonderfully clear wireframes and designs, and helped keep focused on all the different use cases! It was a real pleasure working with you.” - Dom Kendrick, Lead Developer, the Guardian