Context
Deezer, the French music streaming service, wanted to get more market share in Germany, where the market is mature regarding audiobooks consumption. The bet was to offer a bundle plan with music and audiobooks: getting a premium subscription on Deezer gave access to another standalone application called Audiobooks by Deezer, designed especially for listening to audiobooks.
Targets
#1
Support acquisition
Increase the number of new subscribers by making Deezer more attractive, thanks to an additional free service (audiobooks).
#2
Improve retention
Improve the customer life time in Deezer by offering unlimited audiobooks streaming in addition of music streaming.
This project was an experimentation run by a small cross-roles team of 8 (Product design, PM, QA, engineers). As the only product designer on this, I conducted the whole conception of the app along with the PM, from the discovery to the delivery. I mainly focus my work on UX and user research. For the UI, I took advantage of the Deezer design system to save time and enhance the consistency between both apps.
Features examples
Sleep Timer
We found that a lot of users listen to audiobooks to fall asleep. The MVP of the product did not offer any sleep timer at the beginning. The streaming kept going long after the user fall asleep, resulting of struggling to find back where they left the day after.
So we added a feature in the player to give the ability to schedule a timer. The user just had to select a duration and start streaming, before the app stop by itself.
Dubbing voice editorial selection
During user researches, we discovered that users had a strong interest in listening to famous audiobook narrators who are also well-known for their movie dubbing. (ex: listening to a polar read by the James Bond’s german dubbing voice). So we decided to had a carousel on the homepage, highlighting famous dubbing voices to help users find them easily.
Results
2
Native mobile app released
on iOS and Android
2
Car integrations (hardware)
Android auto and CarPlay
80k
weekly active user
8 months after the release
>2 hrs/day
Average daily time of streaming per user
+67%
on lifetime
Premium subs that actively use the audiobooks app have a 67% higher lifetime
User research
User interviews
Focus groups run in Germany
Interviews part of the process of building persona
Usability tests
Surveys
Data driven
decisions
Tracking
Other methodologies
Empathy map
User flows
Collaborative
way of doing
Workshops
Weekly co-conception ritual with the PM
Monthly meeting with the Customer Care team
