Creating Customer Journey Map For
Subscription Product
Creating Customer Journey Map For
Subscription Product
Creating Customer Journey Map For
Subscription Product
Role: Lead UX Researcher
Company: TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers)
Stakeholders: Director of Product, UX Designers, Product Managers, Software Engineers, Product Marketing, Growth Marketing, Customer Success (CX), & Data Science
Core Responsibilities: Secondary Research Review, User Interview Moderation & Synthesis, Diary Study Development & Synthesis, Data Analysis, Journey Map Development
Methodology: In-Depth Interviews, Usability Testing, Diary Study, Behavioral Analytics, Journey-mapping
Tools: Miro, Zoom, Dovetail, Google Forms, Heap, Looker
Project Overview
TPT is an online marketplace for teachers to exchange instructional materials with more than 7 million educators. Most teachers pay out-of-pocket for the materials, and in 2020, TPT launched a subscription-based product, TPT School Access (TPTSA), to help teachers get more of the content they love and need paid for by their schools and districts. With a fast growing subscription product came an appetite for more insight into driving both teachers’ usage and subscription renewals.
Problem
The TPTSA product had existed and evolved for about a year and a half, and many teams and stakeholders had a disparate understanding of a teacher’s journey from receiving an invitation to create their account to regular engagement with the product. As multiple TPTSA product teams focused on driving weekly active usage in TPTSA, there was a need across the product group to have more cohesive and better understanding of key drivers and blockers of teachers’ habitual usage of TPTSA.
Research Objectives
Better understand key drivers and blockers of teachers’ habitual usage of TPTSA
Identify usability improvements
Methodology
Literature Review & Stakeholder Interviews
In-Depth Interviews & Usability Testing
Diary Study
Behavioral Analytics
Journey-mapping
Secondary Research Review & Stakeholder Interviews
In order to evaluate what the product group already understood about the end-to-end teacher journey, I conducted both a review of internal research and stakeholder interviews. I ended up with findings from user research, customer experience (CX), product management, sales and account management, growth marketing, data science, and data analytics. With this information, I determined key phases of the teacher user journey with TPTSA, identified core actions within each phase, and highlighted key learnings. From this journey map, major usability issues were noted and prioritization of recommended next steps were presented to stakeholders.
Role: Lead UX Researcher
Company: TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers)
Stakeholders: Director of Product, UX Designers, Product Managers, Software Engineers, Product Marketing, Growth Marketing, Customer Success (CX), & Data Science
Core Responsibilities: Secondary Research Review, User Interview Moderation & Synthesis, Diary Study Development & Synthesis, Data Analysis, Journey Map Development
Methodology: In-Depth Interviews, Usability Testing, Diary Study, Behavioral Analytics, Journey-mapping
Tools: Miro, Zoom, Dovetail, Google Forms, Heap, Looker
Project Overview
TPT is an online marketplace for teachers to exchange instructional materials with more than 7 million educators. Most teachers pay out-of-pocket for the materials, and in 2020, TPT launched a subscription-based product, TPT School Access (TPTSA), to help teachers get more of the content they love and need paid for by their schools and districts. With a fast growing subscription product came an appetite for more insight into driving both teachers’ usage and subscription renewals.
Problem
The TPTSA product had existed and evolved for about a year and a half, and many teams and stakeholders had a disparate understanding of a teacher’s journey from receiving an invitation to create their account to regular engagement with the product. As multiple TPTSA product teams focused on driving weekly active usage in TPTSA, there was a need across the product group to have more cohesive and better understanding of key drivers and blockers of teachers’ habitual usage of TPTSA.
Research Objectives
Better understand key drivers and blockers of teachers’ habitual usage of TPTSA
Identify usability improvements
Methodology
Literature Review & Stakeholder Interviews
In-Depth Interviews & Usability Testing
Diary Study
Behavioral Analytics
Journey-mapping
Secondary Research Review & Stakeholder Interviews
In order to evaluate what the product group already understood about the end-to-end teacher journey, I conducted both a review of internal research and stakeholder interviews. I ended up with findings from user research, customer experience (CX), product management, sales and account management, growth marketing, data science, and data analytics. With this information, I determined key phases of the teacher user journey with TPTSA, identified core actions within each phase, and highlighted key learnings. From this journey map, major usability issues were noted and prioritization of recommended next steps were presented to stakeholders.
Role: Lead UX Researcher
Company: TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers)
Stakeholders: Director of Product, UX Designers, Product Managers, Software Engineers, Product Marketing, Growth Marketing, Customer Success (CX), & Data Science
Core Responsibilities: Secondary Research Review, User Interview Moderation & Synthesis, Diary Study Development & Synthesis, Data Analysis, Journey Map Development
Methodology: In-Depth Interviews, Usability Testing, Diary Study, Behavioral Analytics, Journey-mapping
Tools: Miro, Zoom, Dovetail, Google Forms, Heap, Looker
Project Overview
TPT is an online marketplace for teachers to exchange instructional materials with more than 7 million educators. Most teachers pay out-of-pocket for the materials, and in 2020, TPT launched a subscription-based product, TPT School Access (TPTSA), to help teachers get more of the content they love and need paid for by their schools and districts. With a fast growing subscription product came an appetite for more insight into driving both teachers’ usage and subscription renewals.
Problem
The TPTSA product had existed and evolved for about a year and a half, and many teams and stakeholders had a disparate understanding of a teacher’s journey from receiving an invitation to create their account to regular engagement with the product. As multiple TPTSA product teams focused on driving weekly active usage in TPTSA, there was a need across the product group to have more cohesive and better understanding of key drivers and blockers of teachers’ habitual usage of TPTSA.
Research Objectives
Better understand key drivers and blockers of teachers’ habitual usage of TPTSA
Identify usability improvements
Methodology
Literature Review & Stakeholder Interviews
In-Depth Interviews & Usability Testing
Diary Study
Behavioral Analytics
Journey-mapping
Secondary Research Review & Stakeholder Interviews
In order to evaluate what the product group already understood about the end-to-end teacher journey, I conducted both a review of internal research and stakeholder interviews. I ended up with findings from user research, customer experience (CX), product management, sales and account management, growth marketing, data science, and data analytics. With this information, I determined key phases of the teacher user journey with TPTSA, identified core actions within each phase, and highlighted key learnings. From this journey map, major usability issues were noted and prioritization of recommended next steps were presented to stakeholders.
After creating the user journey map, I aligned with stakeholders that we needed to 1) get a clearer understanding of teachers’ expectations, needs, and experiences across the funnel from invitation to engagement and 2) to identify opportunities to improve the usability of TPTSA in order to better drive habitual usage of the product. As a result, I advocated for a more comprehensive, multi-method research project that involved in-depth interviews, usability testing, a diary study, and tracking behavioral analytics.
After creating the user journey map, I aligned with stakeholders that we needed to 1) get a clearer understanding of teachers’ expectations, needs, and experiences across the funnel from invitation to engagement and 2) to identify opportunities to improve the usability of TPTSA in order to better drive habitual usage of the product. As a result, I advocated for a more comprehensive, multi-method research project that involved in-depth interviews, usability testing, a diary study, and tracking behavioral analytics.
After creating the user journey map, I aligned with stakeholders that we needed to 1) get a clearer understanding of teachers’ expectations, needs, and experiences across the funnel from invitation to engagement and 2) to identify opportunities to improve the usability of TPTSA in order to better drive habitual usage of the product. As a result, I advocated for a more comprehensive, multi-method research project that involved in-depth interviews, usability testing, a diary study, and tracking behavioral analytics.
In-Depth Interviews & Usability Testing
In partnership with the UX Research Operations and Account Management teams, I recruited teachers from three different schools that had just signed up for a new TPTSA subscription. None of the teachers had activated their TPTSA accounts yet.
I first conducted in-depth interviews to better understand teachers’ expectations, questions, and needs for the subscription. The second half of those interviews then consisted of a usability test to observe teachers’ behaviors, points of frustration, and questions while registering their account and exploring the product for the first time.
In-Depth Interviews & Usability Testing
In partnership with the UX Research Operations and Account Management teams, I recruited teachers from three different schools that had just signed up for a new TPTSA subscription. None of the teachers had activated their TPTSA accounts yet.
I first conducted in-depth interviews to better understand teachers’ expectations, questions, and needs for the subscription. The second half of those interviews then consisted of a usability test to observe teachers’ behaviors, points of frustration, and questions while registering their account and exploring the product for the first time.
In-Depth Interviews & Usability Testing
In partnership with the UX Research Operations and Account Management teams, I recruited teachers from three different schools that had just signed up for a new TPTSA subscription. None of the teachers had activated their TPTSA accounts yet.
I first conducted in-depth interviews to better understand teachers’ expectations, questions, and needs for the subscription. The second half of those interviews then consisted of a usability test to observe teachers’ behaviors, points of frustration, and questions while registering their account and exploring the product for the first time.
Diary Study & Behavioral Analytics
After completing in-depth interviews and usability testing with 15 teachers (from three different schools), I collected additional qualitative and quantitative data from participants using a four-week diary study and data dashboards. The online diary study allowed me to gather asynchronous data and explore how teachers’ experience with the subscription product evolved over time. The analytics dashboards helped me and the Data Analytics team understand what users actually did once they were using the product and triangulate data.
Diary Study & Behavioral Analytics
After completing in-depth interviews and usability testing with 15 teachers (from three different schools), I collected additional qualitative and quantitative data from participants using a four-week diary study and data dashboards. The online diary study allowed me to gather asynchronous data and explore how teachers’ experience with the subscription product evolved over time. The analytics dashboards helped me and the Data Analytics team understand what users actually did once they were using the product and triangulate data.
Diary Study & Behavioral Analytics
After completing in-depth interviews and usability testing with 15 teachers (from three different schools), I collected additional qualitative and quantitative data from participants using a four-week diary study and data dashboards. The online diary study allowed me to gather asynchronous data and explore how teachers’ experience with the subscription product evolved over time. The analytics dashboards helped me and the Data Analytics team understand what users actually did once they were using the product and triangulate data.
Behavioral analytics dashboard (Looker)
Behavioral analytics dashboard (Looker)
Stakeholders debriefed interviews
Stakeholders debriefed interviews
Diary study questionnaire in Google Forms
Diary study questionnaire in Google Forms
Behavioral analytics dashboard in Looker
Behavioral analytics dashboard in Looker
After participants completed the diary study, I conducted brief 15-minute wrap up interviews to tie any loose ends based on our main research questions and ask better questions since I had gained a lot of information from the diary entries and analytics dashboards.
Deliverables
Throughout the study, I shared one-off insights and user quotes to keep stakeholders engaged in the research study.
After participants completed the diary study, I conducted brief 15-minute wrap up interviews to tie any loose ends based on our main research questions and ask better questions since I had gained a lot of information from the diary entries and analytics dashboards.
Deliverables
Throughout the study, I shared one-off insights and user quotes to keep stakeholders engaged in the research study.
After participants completed the diary study, I conducted brief 15-minute wrap up interviews to tie any loose ends based on our main research questions and ask better questions since I had gained a lot of information from the diary entries and analytics dashboards.
Deliverables
Throughout the study, I shared one-off insights and user quotes to keep stakeholders engaged in the research study.
Shared updates via Slack
Shared updates via Slack
Led workshops with stakeholders
Led workshops with stakeholders
Example of diary study questionnaire (Google Forms)
Example of diary study questionnaire (Google Forms)
Guided interview debrief sessions
Guided interview debrief sessions
Shared updates via Slack
Shared updates via Slack
Led hybrid workshops with stakeholders
Led hybrid workshops with stakeholders
I took on synthesizing insights from the in-depth interviews, usability testing, diary study, and behavioral analytics to build out an updated teacher user journey map. The map highlighted user emotions, pain points, questions, and opportunities.
An updated, final user journey map was presented to product, design, product marketing, data analytics, sales, and growth marketing partners along with recommendations around user needs for the subscription-based product.
Crucial Findings & Product Impact
The flow for linking TPTSA to TPT accounts was burdensome: Through data, we saw that teachers that had connected their marketplace TPT account and their TPTSA subscription account used the subscription product 4x as frequently as those that hadn't. That said, the flow of linking accounts during registration was confusing for most users. As a result, the team prioritized building a simpler flow that automated parts of the process.
Button CTAs in TPTSA were confusing to users, which made them nervous to take any action: The product team updated the color and A/B tested new CTA messaging to simplify and clarify actions users could take to access materials.
For additional findings and learnings please contact mfredericks.research@gmail.com.
My Learnings
It's important to keep stakeholders engaged and updated throughout a research project that included multiple methods. I found this was particularly true during the diary study phase of this project as stakeholders couldn't readily jump in to observe users' experiences (like they could during in-depth interviews and usability testing). As a result, I made sure that I scheduled a workshop during and after the diary study to give stakeholders a chance to read entries and get a sense of what users were sharing over the four-week period.
Sometimes one-off learnings can be important to pay attention to. During follow-up interviews, I observed one user that struggled to navigate to the TPTSA site. As a result, I updated my discussion guide to ask subsequent participants to show me how they typically navigated to the site and found that many struggled as well. This became a crucial finding and led to the removal of a marketing test that was hindering users' ability to actually use the site.
I took on synthesizing insights from the in-depth interviews, usability testing, diary study, and behavioral analytics to build out an updated teacher user journey map. The map highlighted user emotions, pain points, questions, and opportunities.
An updated, final user journey map was presented to product, design, product marketing, data analytics, sales, and growth marketing partners along with recommendations around user needs for the subscription-based product.
Crucial Findings & Product Impact
The flow for linking TPTSA to TPT accounts was burdensome: Through data, we saw that teachers that had connected their marketplace TPT account and their TPTSA subscription account used the subscription product 4x as frequently as those that hadn't. That said, the flow of linking accounts during registration was confusing for most users. As a result, the team prioritized building a simpler flow that automated parts of the process.
Button CTAs in TPTSA were confusing to users, which made them nervous to take any action: The product team updated the color and A/B tested new CTA messaging to simplify and clarify actions users could take to access materials.
For additional findings and learnings please contact mfredericks.research@gmail.com.
My Learnings
It's important to keep stakeholders engaged and updated throughout a research project that included multiple methods. I found this was particularly true during the diary study phase of this project as stakeholders couldn't readily jump in to observe users' experiences (like they could during in-depth interviews and usability testing). As a result, I made sure that I scheduled a workshop during and after the diary study to give stakeholders a chance to read entries and get a sense of what users were sharing over the four-week period.
Sometimes one-off learnings can be important to pay attention to. During follow-up interviews, I observed one user that struggled to navigate to the TPTSA site. As a result, I updated my discussion guide to ask subsequent participants to show me how they typically navigated to the site and found that many struggled as well. This became a crucial finding and led to the removal of a marketing test that was hindering users' ability to actually use the site.
I took on synthesizing insights from the in-depth interviews, usability testing, diary study, and behavioral analytics to build out an updated teacher user journey map. The map highlighted user emotions, pain points, questions, and opportunities.
An updated, final user journey map was presented to product, design, product marketing, data analytics, sales, and growth marketing partners along with recommendations around user needs for the subscription-based product.
Crucial Findings & Product Impact
The flow for linking TPTSA to TPT accounts was burdensome: Through data, we saw that teachers that had connected their marketplace TPT account and their TPTSA subscription account used the subscription product 4x as frequently as those that hadn't. That said, the flow of linking accounts during registration was confusing for most users. As a result, the team prioritized building a simpler flow that automated parts of the process.
Button CTAs in TPTSA were confusing to users, which made them nervous to take any action: The product team updated the color and A/B tested new CTA messaging to simplify and clarify actions users could take to access materials.
For additional findings and learnings please contact mfredericks.research@gmail.com.
My Learnings
It's important to keep stakeholders engaged and updated throughout a research project that included multiple methods. I found this was particularly true during the diary study phase of this project as stakeholders couldn't readily jump in to observe users' experiences (like they could during in-depth interviews and usability testing). As a result, I made sure that I scheduled a workshop during and after the diary study to give stakeholders a chance to read entries and get a sense of what users were sharing over the four-week period.
Sometimes one-off learnings can be important to pay attention to. During follow-up interviews, I observed one user that struggled to navigate to the TPTSA site. As a result, I updated my discussion guide to ask subsequent participants to show me how they typically navigated to the site and found that many struggled as well. This became a crucial finding and led to the removal of a marketing test that was hindering users' ability to actually use the site.