Newsela Free & Premium Experiences
These new experiences helped increase Newsela’s own NPS.
Role: Product Design Director
Before
AfterImpact
Newsela’s Recommended Score (NRS, Newsela’s own NPS) was UP a bit relative to November 2022. It’s the first year-over-year increase seen all school year. The increase is particularly large among paid users - again suggesting the incremental product improvements made to the premium product have been paying off.
As of November 2023
YoY NRS Trend overall: 65.6
(Up 1.8 from previous year)
YoY NRS Trend for paid users: 70.1
(Up 8.1 from previous year)
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The creators of the NPS metric, Bain & Company, said that although an NPS score above 0 is good, above 20 is great, and above 50 is amazing. Anywhere above 80 is the top percentile.
The Problem
Teachers and administrators using Newsela's Free license lacked awareness of Newsela's Premium offerings and consequently did not express interest in accessing them.
Meanwhile, those with Newsela's Premium license sometimes lacked clarity regarding the benefits they were receiving and the usage of premium content and features. As a result, they did not fully appreciate the value of these features and did not experience the concern of losing access to them.
This lack of awareness and appreciation contributed to School Districts either opting not to renew premium licenses or hesitating to upgrade, ultimately impacting the bottom line.
Auditing the entire product
The audit of the features involved thoroughly examining the web experience, and collaborating with product managers, engineers, QA engineers, and product marketing to understand product offerings, how the corresponding features look on the platform, and the backend functionality of those. With the collected insights, the team efficiently designed a solution based on best practices from similar companies, while considering engineering feasibility and business goals. The focus was on improving the Free and Trial experience.
Research and iteration
Based on feedback from UX Research involving 15 participants, we enhanced the new Free experience. It offers up to 4 free articles every 4 weeks and includes a 45-day individual free trial, which can be extended by another 45 days if your school district activates it.
Premium Trial experience
The Premium Trial gave teachers and school administrators the opportunity to experience all the Premium features for 45 days. With a noticeable purple bar at the top of the screen reminding them how many days left they have on their trial.
Core Team
Product Manager
Jenny Thai
Product Designer
Kevin Leung
UX Researcher
Nichole Aquino
UX Writing
Melany Biekarck
Engineer Lead
Brian Grossman
Senior Director of Product Management
Christina Pirzada
Director of Product Design
Carlos Jara