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Challenge
The Vogue design team was tasked with crafting the first-ever Vogue digital paywall, after a strategic business decision was made to shift to a subscription model for digital content. We were given a short turnaround time to work across a number of cross-functional partners—Editorial, Legal, Marketing, Consumer Revenue, and Creative—to come together to adapt Condé Nast’s current subscription model and payment flows to Vogue. Implementing a paywall means automatically frustrating the user, so Design had the specific responsibility of balancing this business need with taking a user-centric approach as much as possible.
Approach
For such a strategic business proposition, we looked to the numbers when it came to subscription design. By analyzing data on which audience segments (e.g. coming in from search vs. social) registered for a free account on which types of content (e.g. Culture vs. Runway site sections).
Because this was such a drastic change for readers, we implemented a phased approach: warning gates on 1–3 articles before landing on an article that was fully gated. We crafted straightforward, clear messaging, in lieu of marketing messaging to delicately balance a moment when consistent readers would be faced with paying to continue their readership. This meant providing upfront warning on the amount of free articles left to access, and a more emphasized “hard” barrier when they could not go any further.
We crafted a handful of panel tests and accompanying flows to help us better understand, and optimize, conversion.
Outcomes
Our first paywall campaign drove 61% of total site subscriptions since launch. Overall, the daily site subscription average has increased +116% since. The following year, British Vogue became the first Condé Nast brand with an international paywall, following Vogue.com’s template and scaling for GDPR, international, and localization needs.
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