Launching a new subscription service for Yahoo Finance on iOS and Android.
My role
I was the design lead responsible for launching this service on mobile, and making sure we had feature parity with web. I also optimized the funnel for conversion through native in-app purchase flows.
The team
I collaborated with a product managers, designers, marketing, creative, and engineering teams from Android, iOS and web.
Yahoo Finance was put forward as strong candidate to trial a new subscription service. This was part of a company objective to diversify revenue streams, and not rely on display advertising as much.
I had some involvement in identifying data sets for this target audience. I was responsible for streamlining the funnel to convert free users to paying subscribers by contextual up-sells, and payment integration.
The problem
Users wanted to track all portfolios in one place, and have the tools to analyze them on any device.
We heard this feedback consistently in research, and we wanted to make sure our mobile experience was at feature parity with web, which is where most Yahoo Finance users hang out.
Addressable audience
High traffic pages were targeted for "Plus" upsells.
100M+
Monthly active users
30%
Mobile active users
Business opportunity
Diversify revenue streams through subscription services.
Achieving this would unlock a monetization strategy for all Yahoo brands that didn't rely on display advertising. Following this successful launch, multiple other brands created subscription services as well.
Intro
What is Yahoo Finance Plus?
A subscription service that unlocked access to a bunch of great data sets for retails investors. These included advanced portfolio analytics, research reports, investment ideas, enhanced charting features, alternative company insight data, and exclusive Yahoo Finance community insights.

Side note: When I worked on this it was called "Premium", it was later rebranded to "Plus" to make it scalable as other brands created their own subscription services.
A module from the "Plus" landing page.
Entry points
Exposing entry points to the paid features in context to relevant data.
The first step of the funnel, in the product, was exposing clear entry points that would get you to the marketing upsell, using contextually relevant data. We did not want to be intrusive to the millions of people who use the free experience, and we all agreed that in-context entry points would be more effective.
Showing each of the entry points, from the prototype used for user testing.
Home tab: Expanded "premium insights" entry point.
Home tab: Expanded portfolio card entry point.
After taking these through research, we felt pretty good about balancing the level of prominence, and the contextual placement. We were also testing different brand colors at this point, so the next concepts are using the final branding.
Live: We kept this entry point, updated branding.
Live: Also kept this, updated branding.
Live: Added different entry point below.
After locking these entry points in, we also added more on other high traffic pages. The stock summary page is one of the highest traffic pages on the platform, and we had some company-specific content we could showcase there.
Default stock summary page, no upsells above the fold.
Additional analyst rating module with exclusive additional insights.
Company outlook module with alternative data sets for companies.
In-app purchase
The next step once we had piqued user interest was to show them the marketing experience.
This summarized the benefits and gave an overview of the features from a marketing perspective. We then gave easy access to subscribe through native patterns for the iOS App Store, and Google Play.
A fully native version which we didn't have time to build.
The mobile web version of the marketing landing page.
The hybrid version of the mobile web page, with native wrapper.
The native prototype used for user testing with persistent sticky drawer.
The prototype used to communicate the hide/show drawer to engineerings for the final hybrid version.
Launch
This launch was incredible to be a part of, especially because I'd only been in New York for 8 months.
This is kind of a side note, but seeing my designs on the big screens in Times Square was surreal. We also got to ring the closing bell at the Nasdaq, which was wild.
Hanging out at the Nasdaq building.
Impact
The launch was successful, but we did miss some of the ambitious goals we were aiming for.
Our signals were still looking strong, and we geared up to continue the roll-out based on the positive response from leadership. This service has since gone on to become a substantial contributor to revenue for the business.
2,000 free trials initiated
We smashed this goal, and got well over 2k free trials started.
Convert 50% to subscribers
We missed this goal, but still converted around 30%.
Fuzzy numbers representing ambitious "30 day post launch goals".
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