Ultimate Guitar
PRODUCT GROWTH DESIGNER | 2020-2021
PRODUCT GROWTH DESIGNER | 2020-2021
#1 source for chords, guitar tabs, bass tabs, ukulele chords, guitar pro and power tabs. Comprehensive tabs archive with over 1,100,000 tabs.
80mln MAU | 120 Employees and 8 Designers
80mln MAU | 120 Employees and 8 Designers
- Conducted over 100 A/B tests to find out the best solutions to increase conversion rate purchases, improve onboarding, streamline the user experience.
- As a result, 34% ARPU increased via relative conversion rate purchases increased
My main task at UG was to come up
with hypotheses to grow ARPU
with hypotheses to grow ARPU
Based on previous experiments and market trends, I concluded that Personalization is one of the strongest areas. My task was to come up with what kind of personalization method to add to the product.
My plan consisted of the following steps:
1. Study and decompose the audience that needs to be influenced;
2. Understand their motivations and challenges;
3. Create a solution that personalizes the experience of selected audience groups.
What do users dream about?
Analytics showed that you need to influence the audience, consisting of 60% newcomers to music. Qualitative research has shown that there are two main motivations why beginners look for tabs and chords and want to start learning how to play.
Beginners are inspired by:
1. The idea of learning to play your favorite song;
2. They want to be cool and learn to play popular songs to brag to their friends or girlfriend.
I also had a discussion with music teachers and found out main problems.
Main problems for beginner musicians:
1. The learning process seems to be very long and the student does not see progress, begins to think that there is no ability for this;
2. Cannot organize himself and practice regularly, because he does not see the ultimate goal;
3. The selected favorite song is very difficult and the user underestimates its complexity, as a result he quits.
Beginners are inspired by:
1. The idea of learning to play your favorite song;
2. They want to be cool and learn to play popular songs to brag to their friends or girlfriend.
I also had a discussion with music teachers and found out main problems.
Main problems for beginner musicians:
1. The learning process seems to be very long and the student does not see progress, begins to think that there is no ability for this;
2. Cannot organize himself and practice regularly, because he does not see the ultimate goal;
3. The selected favorite song is very difficult and the user underestimates its complexity, as a result he quits.
I asked teachers what basic advice they can give to aspiring musicians to achieve what they want. All 6 teachers had the same answers.
Advice from teachers:
1. You need to exercise regularly;
2. To progress, you need to study at least a certain number of hours per week.
Based on this research, I came up with and described about 40 ideas on how you can personalize the experience of novice musicians, keep them motivated to practice.
The best result in 15 A/B tests showed a 14% increase in ARPU, which is a very good indicator for Ultimate Guitar.
Winning combination:
The winning combination of options contained a schedule for future classes, along with personalized levels for each direction of music. The user chose how many hours per week he is ready to devote to classes and the graph displayed how many months he would need to study in order to reach the next level. Thus, the screen clearly showed how many months you need to lay down for training and explained that in order to progress you need to practice regularly and indicated the intensity.
Advice from teachers:
1. You need to exercise regularly;
2. To progress, you need to study at least a certain number of hours per week.
Based on this research, I came up with and described about 40 ideas on how you can personalize the experience of novice musicians, keep them motivated to practice.
The best result in 15 A/B tests showed a 14% increase in ARPU, which is a very good indicator for Ultimate Guitar.
Winning combination:
The winning combination of options contained a schedule for future classes, along with personalized levels for each direction of music. The user chose how many hours per week he is ready to devote to classes and the graph displayed how many months he would need to study in order to reach the next level. Thus, the screen clearly showed how many months you need to lay down for training and explained that in order to progress you need to practice regularly and indicated the intensity.
Others experiments
My ideation process
In my experience, the most interesting and successful experiments are when you can find evidence of the same idea from two different sources. As a result, I make a description which consists of: Which part of the product is the change? What is before? What is after? How can the user get to the screen? What are we going to change? What are we going to leave? What will be the text? Why will this work?
My personal chellenge
I had to think up 10 hypotheses a week, 3 of which must be powerful and potent. Hypotheses must be directed to increase of ARPU and accesses. At the same time I designed and implemented about 5 A/B tests a week. As Ultimate Guitar had no UX research culture and no goal to build it, I had to find various sources of knowledge to be successful.