What is the optimal unsubscribing journey for paid video streaming services?
Glaser, Lais (2022)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202205118569
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202205118569
Tiivistelmä
With the digitalisation of daily life, paid video streaming services became common practice amongst most people. Media companies launched their own services to be a part of the competition, and with that came the need to
find ways to keep subscribers paying for their service. For that, some user experience designers turned to dark designs patterns, which made users attempting to cancel their video streaming memberships even more complicated.
To find out where the middle-ground between services trying to convince their users to stay and the best possible cancellation experience for the user is, user testing of four commonly used video streaming services was conducted with twenty-one different people in different age groups. The testing aimed to understand user’s interactions with the service, their pain points, and what kinds of dark design patterns could be found in those journeys.
Through the research, an average time spent on the cancellation process was mapped, the bad aspects of existing unsubscribing journeys were understood, and a careful set of guidelines was created to fulfil the gap between a good user experience and a service keeping their paying clients. According to the survey findings, the most successful unsubscribing journey includes a clear button to “cancel membership”, gathers feedback from the user’s reasons to cancel, does not try to offer last minute offers or recommendations, and offers a clear confirmation that the subscription was cancelled.
Additional research and user testing would be needed to gather information about if the journeys vary depending on the subscribers’ age.
find ways to keep subscribers paying for their service. For that, some user experience designers turned to dark designs patterns, which made users attempting to cancel their video streaming memberships even more complicated.
To find out where the middle-ground between services trying to convince their users to stay and the best possible cancellation experience for the user is, user testing of four commonly used video streaming services was conducted with twenty-one different people in different age groups. The testing aimed to understand user’s interactions with the service, their pain points, and what kinds of dark design patterns could be found in those journeys.
Through the research, an average time spent on the cancellation process was mapped, the bad aspects of existing unsubscribing journeys were understood, and a careful set of guidelines was created to fulfil the gap between a good user experience and a service keeping their paying clients. According to the survey findings, the most successful unsubscribing journey includes a clear button to “cancel membership”, gathers feedback from the user’s reasons to cancel, does not try to offer last minute offers or recommendations, and offers a clear confirmation that the subscription was cancelled.
Additional research and user testing would be needed to gather information about if the journeys vary depending on the subscribers’ age.