Netflix.com Acquisition Home Redesign
A large redesign of the main home page used by millions of users to learn and begin signing up for Netflix.
My Role
I was the Lead Product Designer for Netflix's main sign-up pages, including Netflix.com, the sign-up process, and payment systems on mobile, web, and TV. The primary goal was to increase sign-up conversion rates.
Project Importance
This was one of the first projects I pitched to the Product Management team at Netflix. At that time, the Netflix.com home page lacked essential information about the service. This wasn’t just my perspective—it was a documented concern voiced by customers in several qualitative research sessions.
I believed it needed to change to address the information customers were asking for.
Teams Involved
Product Design, Product, UX Research, Marketing, Front and Back-end Engineering, Legal, Payments, and various Executives.
Success metrics
Increase partial and full sign ups.
Increase user trust.
Defining the Problems
Part of my role was to define the various problems the design needed to address.
Customer Problem:
Customers felt the main landing page for Netflix did not clearly communicate what the service offered. This issue was particularly pronounced among customers outside the U.S.
Business Problem:
Netflix.com received significant traffic from both paid and organic sources, but conversion rates needed improvement.
Design Problem:
The Netflix landing pages lacked a cohesive design system or structured framework, which made it difficult to develop and test new ideas efficiently.
New Plan and Goals
The previous strategy involved designing and testing each component of the sign-up process—acquisition landing, sign-up, and payment—as independent projects. I proposed a holistic plan to redesign the entire user journey, applying consistent design principles from landing to completion while establishing an updated design system. I had successfully implemented a similar approach for the TV UI two years earlier.
I planned to use Design Thinking and Systemic Design to develop the new sign-up process. This approach would not only ensure a customer-centric design but also create scalable systems that could be reused beyond the sign-up process.
Customer Personas
Designing for customers landing on Netflix.com was tricky because of varying degrees of needs.
Customer Persona 2
This customer needs more information about Netflix that’s easy to find on the landing page. Not all their questions need to be answered, but they require enough information to feel confident about signing up.
Customer Persona 1
This customer knows what they want and just wants to sign up for Netflix without extra information. They need a clear, straightforward path to sign up.
Customer Persona 3
This customer is a former Netflix member. They are already familiar with the service and just need a clear sign-in destination.
Customer Persona 4
This customer is ready to sign up but is short on time. They can easily be distracted by additional information on the page and might forget to complete the sign-up process.
Informational Structure
I first thing I did was to divide the Netflix landing page into two sections for customers:
A top area featuring quick access to an exciting image that represents Netflix and provides clear direction on how to sign up.
A bottom area that remained unobtrusive but offered additional information for customers who needed it before signing up.
Researching What Info to Present
I had some initial ideas about the information customers might need, but I’m not the user. To gain accurate insights, I collaborated with the research team to survey potential customers across different regions.
More than ten areas of interest emerged from the research. We focused on the top three:
How to watch Netflix
Pricing information
Cancellation process
User Feedback on the UX
As always, we tested prototypes with user groups. During these qualitative testing sessions, users provided positive feedback on the new design.
Responsive Design
All Netflix designs needed to be responsive to accommodate any device or screen size. Mobile presented the greatest challenge because it required prioritizing the most critical information compared to larger screens.
The Main Image Construction and Concept
The grid of content has become a hallmark of streaming services, but this wasn’t always the case. When this concept launched, very few services used it.
The inspiration came from an IMDb ad showcasing a content grid. I had tested a similar concept with users who wanted to see content but didn't want to get lost in exploring our catalog before joining, as this often hurt conversion rates.
This approach struck a balance by displaying content without overwhelming users, and other streaming services later adopted similar concepts for their main acquisition areas.
A/B Testing and Results
For the A/B test, we created several variations, changing the order of information in the first, second, and third tab positions. This gave us a clear understanding of which piece of information was most important to customers at that time.
Results showed a significant lift in sign-up conversion rates. The most impactful piece of information was about the ease of canceling Netflix, which aligned with customer concerns expressed during qualitative research.
Current Status
A variation of this design is still used today on Netflix.com.
Netflix.com redesign post launch.