Repackaging Checkfront
The main problem
Checkfront kept the same pricing for over eight years. We're growing slower and slower, and revenue is beginning to stagnate. The company wanted a new strategy to increase the acquisition of new customers, ensure customer loyalty, and increase marketability for funding. Category
Design Ops, UX Strategy, Learning |
Project overview
Project title
Upgrades, Downgrades and Product and Pricing Strategy, also known as Repackaging People involved
Timeline
Impact
|
The why behind the pricing strategyCheckfront is a business for allowing people to sell experiences using a booking software that manages customer's booking, inventory, reporting, messaging, and web hosting in one centralized tool. It has a recurring revenue of $15 M handling more than $1 B in booking revenue volume.
For a long time Checkfront knew that they were overcharging some of the pricing plans and underselling others. Checkfront was also lagging behind growth targets.
|
Methodology
I relied on a triple diamond process our product design team at Checkfront created and all the activities under this list was used to deliver this project successfully.
Research
Design
Validate
Collaboration
QA
Pre launch
Post launch
|
Challenges and how I got over themTop down approach
💡 Challenge
This was a top down project that had a tight timeline. 🧡 Solution We delivered what they wanted and what the company needed at that time. Cannot test with customers
💡 Challenge
I had no buy in to test against actual customers because they did not want to fully announce the plans changing. 🧡 Solution We had internal testing and ongoing critiques with the rest of the product design team. The research with competitors also helped us stick to best practices. Freemium is not ideal
💡 Challenge
My research indicated that launching a freemium plan might be premature for us. We are better of with a demo-led approach, given the current usability challenges we face—despite the high learnability of our product. 🧡 Solution Embracing the existing business decision was a strategic move, driven by our ambition to attract investors through the high-growth usage of our product. When we achieved this milestone, we refined our strategy. This involved streamlining our plan offerings and phasing out the freemium option, improving the revenue model and targeting better quality clients. Too many stakeholders
💡 Challenge
We faced delays in resolving issues due to the many stakeholders in our project, with decisions taking up to two weeks. 🧡 Solution While our team couldn’t make all the calls, we started weekly cross-team meetings to quicken decision-making. We focused on achievable tasks, met our deadlines, and the project was a success, meeting stakeholders’ financial goals. We’ve identified communication as a key area for improvement in future projects, and I’m playing a significant role in this initiative. |
My research suggested Freemium is not a good idea, because of Checkfront's learning curve and considerable UX debt
I found out we either had to:
Checkfront has problems in copy, having been initially created by developers without UX design oversight. Our research suggests consider Checkfront learnable but often it takes our clients over a year to master using the app if they are not tech savvy. At the time, this project needed to attract investors, so despite the risks, we went ahead with launching a free plan with a focus on ensuring it was highly profitable. |
Customers who downgraded and got automatically upgraded caused the billing team a LOT of headache
I've uncovered that our plan payment process from 2022 was incredibly manual. We had several problems that needed fixing.
I was determined to ensure that the problems were solved. |
Before: Signup page was difficult to navigate
|
After: Signup became easier to navigate with improved accessibility and better copy
|
Before: Customers had to choose from 7 plan options, custom plans, and staff had highly manual workflows
❌ Before - We had 7+ Plans
|
After: Reduced plans, standardized benefits, completely self-serve downgrade and upgrade experience
✅ After - Updated plans now easier to navigate and choose
|
After: The new downgrade and upgrade flow removed the headache for the billing and support team for chasing payments and manually updating plan benefits, saving us extra dollars and time
✅ After - Upgrade and Downgrade Process
|
After: We tracked the best performing paywalls, and created a reusable template as a base for future paywalls
Before we updated our plans, the presence of paywalls was minimal since we relied on usage-based capping of our plans, such as the number of bookings and users. This meant there was no differentiation of premium features across the plans.
|
After: Mobile responsiveness was prioritized for the entire project which is a big win!
|
Cross department teamwork established!
This project achieved $1.3M in just 3 months, record high customer acquisition, Checkfront acquisition and merger deal with Rezdy and Regiondo, and provided data insights that will support future pricing strategy changes
Wins
✨ We grew our user base, hitting our record high signups since the past 6 years. ✨ We reduced churn for higher paying customers that could downgrade. ✨ Checkfront was able to negotiate an acquisition merger deal, and now merged with two other companies namely: Rezdy and Regiondo. ✨ Increased adoption for Checkfront Payments. ✨ Overall since implementation, the project generated 1.3M USD in related revenue in the first 3 months alone, and brought in more people to adopt Checkfront Payments, Checkfront, and upgrade. ✨ Solved the difficulty of manually chasing payments for people who downgraded and manually adjusting their plan type since we allowed them to downgrade right away but they kept all the benefits, reducing finance team's effort in managing customers. ✨ Solved the problem of customers getting automatically upgraded to the next plan when their plan hit their plan type limits, reducing customer support complaints. |
Credits to Storyset for their vector illustrations that made this page look lot better.
Let's Talk
If any of my projects interest you, feel free to reach out! I can elaborate on them better on a call if you want.
I accept freelance work and charge on a per-project basis. I like taking on projects that give me a lot of creative freedom. I enjoy ones that help make the world a better place.
I typically respond to emails within two business days but if I'm busy, expect a reply within a week at most!
I accept freelance work and charge on a per-project basis. I like taking on projects that give me a lot of creative freedom. I enjoy ones that help make the world a better place.
I typically respond to emails within two business days but if I'm busy, expect a reply within a week at most!