Client
Our client is a leading subscription tech and marketing company, working for mid and large US newspapers. The company provides customizable software solutions to automate subscription models and provides strategic guidance for expanding newspaper reach and revenue.
Challenge
The client needed to develop a software product that would allow to customize subscription flows and personalize offers to increase conversion rate. The expected result was that the Newspaper would customize user journey and style without technical assistance, and each visitor would get personalized subscription options, based on ones history, preferences, and loyalty. The product visually and technically would become a part of a Newspaper unified ecosystem.
Project Description
We delivered a front-end offer personalization engine that derives data from other data analytics systems, using API, and configures customer journey and subscription offers for each user, based on this data. Let’s see in more detail what this personalization involves:
- Adjustment of customer journey and UI: each user gets a certain sequence of steps to explore possible offers and purchase a subscription. UI elements – page layouts, entry fields, styles – are also adjusted dynamically. UX can be easily switched (reconfigured) to another one if it does not work well from conversion perspective.
- Adjustment of offer options and sometimes price: each user gets a tailored range of subscription options that may vary in subscription duration, its content, delivery frequency, up-sell and cross-sell options, special offers or discounts, and more. Besides, some subscription options have a dynamic price, and depending on the user’s likelihood to subscribe, this price may vary from higher to lower.
The following systems are used as data sources, allowing for configuration of customer journey, UI, and exposing personalized offers :
- Content Management System supplies data on required UX and UI for the product.
- Customer Engagement System supplies user data (such as demographics, location, purchase history, preferences, behavior, etc) for intelligent offer personalization.
- Offer builder provides avaialble subscription offers for a certain user.
Apart from personalization of path to subscription, the system incentivizes the user to complete the purchase by pop-up notifications, which take place if the user is likely to interrupt the process. If the user doesn’t purchase the subscription, the system sends this data to the analytics server to identify which steps are prone to purchase abandonment.
Another task was to protect the system from CC fraud and DDoS attacks, which were primarily aimed at validate the credit card data. For this, we implemented recaptcha and IP activity monitoring tool, which blocked IPs that produce suspicious behavior.
The offer personalization engine works as white-label solution, which means that the Newspapers can use it under their own brand name and identity.
Key Features
Data-driven configuration of personalized paid subscription options, as well as customer journey and UI
Advanced protection against CC fraud and DDoS attacks
White-labeling, allowing Newspaper brands to use their own visuals, names, and URLs
Integration with other parts of client’s tech stack for data communication and overall interoperability
Team & Time Frame
The team completed this project for 1 year, and involved:
3 Frontend developers
2 backend developers
Major Tech Stack
HTML (PUG), CSS (Less), TypeScript, Node.js
