A landing page for both existing and potential subscribers that explains how and why to install The Washington Post app.

Overview

The Subscriptions team had a smart link they used in various marketing touchpoints across The Washington Post product ecosystem that would send users directly to the appropriate app install page depending on device type, but there needed to be a landing page as a fallback for when user was on a desktop browser or their mobile device type couldn’t be detected.

The existing page needed to have its content updated to reflect new app features and it needed to be migrated to a new platform on Webflow. This need provided an opportunity to also update the design of the landing page.

My role in this project was Lead Designer and Developer. This was part of a larger project to update several marketing touchpoints related to the app, so I worked closely with the art director, a campaign designer and a copywriter on my team, the Brand Marketing team.

Discovery

The first step was an audit of the existing landing page to establish what we were starting from. I also did a competitor analysis to have an understanding of what other media companies were doing in this space.

Design Process

My goals with the redesign were to 1) simplify the appearance of the page by moving it inline with our new landing page design system and 2) make the content digestible and engaging to users who found themselves there. The Subscriptions team had data showing app users were much more likely to be retained as subscribers than non-app users, so we wanted to make sure this page both encouraged and simplified app installation.

I went through several rounds of explorations and got feedback from the art director (and eventually the Head of the Brand Studio). The Brand team did not have access to user testing capabilities, plus the timeline was quite short, so I had to rely on my knowledge of design principles and experience to come up with a design that best met the goals of the project.

I incorporated updated illustrations created by my teammates for the larger project, worked closely with the copywriter to make sure the page was impactful from a content standpoint and also was careful to ensure the page was user-friendly across all viewport sizes, even though we knew the majority of traffic to the page would be desktop users due to the nature of the page.

Final Design

The final design focused on giving users the most critical information at the top, which included a QR code and direct links to the Apple and Google app stores. I removed the classic navbar from the page to move that critical content even higher on the page. This was important because a user would land on the page after having already clicked a link in an email or another marketing touchpoint to download the app. This page was primarily a fallback and needed to get to the point as quickly as possible.

However, Subscriptions and leadership wanted to include additional information about why the app was worth installing in case any users were still unsure. My team chose to include callouts on 6 features, including our newest feature called Ask The Post AI. I made sure to include this as a visually obvious separate section so it wouldn’t confuse or distract from the primary call to action and I laid these out in a clean grid (responsive down to 1 column on mobile) with small illustrations to make the content easy to digest and engaging.