Tinder Platinum

Overview
Designing a new premium subscription tier for the world's most popular dating app, Tinder. I led the visual design and focus group testing of multiple iterations to land on two new features: prioritized likes, and pre-match messaging.

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Role
Duration
Design Lead
October '19 — May '20
View full presentation here
Business Problem
Declining subscriber growth–– 65% of Tinder Gold subscribers churn after the 1st month.
User Problem
Getting matches is difficult. Users (mainly male) purchase Gold to unlock a list of all the people that like them. After subscribing, users will swipe through all their ‘Likes’. Male users dominate the platform, and swipe right significantly more than females do. Consequently, the imbalance means that Gold users aren't matching frequently enough to retain their subscription.
User Research
We noticed a unique subset of high-paying users—Tinder ‘Whales’, who individually spent over $10,000/year on subscriptions + a-la-carte features. After interviewing several of them, we uncovered their motivations and reasoning behind their spending habits.
“I expect to spend money on Tinder—  I already spend a lot on my dates.”
Validation
To validate the user problem, we conducted a series of AB tests to see if educating Gold subscribers about the additional valuable features would help them get more likes, and in turn, improve retention.
AB Exploration / Boost
30% of new subs didn’t use free Boost in their 1st month—incentivizing them to do so would improve retention. The result: more likes received but no change in retention.
Test 1
Test 2
AB Exploration / Gold
Since many Gold users didn’t use their free Boost, communicating the additional features/value of Gold would improve retention + acquisition. The result: lower conversion for non-subscribers and a minimal change in subscriber retention.
Original
Test
Takeaways
A-B Testing revealed it wasn’t an issue of communicating the value of Gold to get subscribers to retain. Our hypothesis that educating users about the additional features of Gold would improve retention wasn’t true. Gold does help users get more likes–– but not enough. A new subscription with new features could.
Ideation
We conduced focus group interviews to get feedback on numerous new feature concepts. After receiving feedback about the perceived value of these features, I used a value / effort matrix to identify that Prioritized Likes and Swipe Note (Message before Match) were the most feasible and valuable in helping users consistently get more likes.
Focus Group Concepts
Upgraded Boosts
Pinned Messages
Views
Users want greater visibility
Getting seen quicker means  faster matches
Feature #1 / Prioritized Likes
Usually when a user swipes on someone, it can take an extend period of time before that other person sees their profile & swipes/matches. A Super Like increases priority in the queue. Prioritized Likes, on the other hand, would allow Platinum users to be seen by the other person upon app-open as the first profile— increasing visibility & time saved waiting.
Feature #2 / Swipe Note
Swipe Note allows users to message before a match. Based on our findings that messaging a Match within 24 hours increases chances of reply by 40%, this would give subscribers further visibility & priority. After feedback from user testing, we decided to change the frequency from 1 SwipeNote/month to any SuperLike sent.
Tradeoffs
Since initially planned to offer Platinum to Gold subscribers only, we scoped out the ability to directly compare subscriptions, and chose to leverage the existing upsell carousel on the profile page (left). This was eventually built post-launch (right), and helps clearly differentiate the tiers, especially for new users.
Non-subscriber upsell (control)
Subscription page (scoped out)
Impact
Over 1 million subscribers in 2021, generating $1.65 billion in revenue. With Platinum, users spent 70% less time swiping and matched 25% more frequently. Overall, this led to a 12% higher retention than Gold subscribers.
Reflection
With the success of Platinum, I realized that testing trumps assumptions. Initially, I was weary that if Gold wasn't helping users get more matches–– why would they pay for another subscription? Platinum showed me that creating more value at a higher cost is also in the user's best interests. People want love, and are happy to pay if it helps them find it.
Tinder Japan
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