Subscription
Funnel
Redesign

Case Study 01

Overview

Gustavo Dudamel's arrival as Music Director prompted a two-phase redesign of nyphil.org. Phase one covers the event calendar, roster and bio pages, My Account dashboard overhaul, and mobile-optimized seat selection for single-ticket buyers. Phase two extends that seat map to subscription renewals in 2027. This case study covers the subscription funnel audit and seat map redesign.

The season announcement drove 17k new users to the site on launch day; only 1.6% converted. It synthesizes quantitative data and qualitative feedback across user paths, interface layouts, and device-specific behavior to pinpoint the high-friction points keeping historic hype from becoming revenue.

Role
Lead Strategist

Timeline
December 2025 → March 2027

Tools
Silverstripe CMS, GA4, Looker Studio, Figma, Google Workspace


Skills
GA4 Click-Path Analysis, User Journey Mapping, Persona Development, Purchase Flow Heuristic Evaluation, Content Strategy

The Challenge

Marketing generated immense interest in Dudamel’s arrival, resulting in 21K total launch day users, but the mobile experience and content structure hamstrung that demand.

  • Audience Segments

    • First-Time Visitors: 84.1% of all launch-day traffic.

    • Returning Visitors: 15.9% of all launch-day traffic.

    • The Problem: conversion rates differed sharply between the two pointing to an IA barrier for people unfamiliar with the purchase path.

  • Device Discrepancies

    • Top-of-Funnel Traffic: 2,359 mobile users vs. 2,708 desktop users.

    • Completed Purchases: 142 mobile checkouts vs. 509 desktop checkouts.

    • The Problem: a significant drop in completed mobile transactions despite similar initial interest traffic across devices.

I investigated what was causing conversions to fail by looking at architecture flaws, interface layout issues, and technical breakdowns across devices and user groups.

That investigation pointed to the subscription-only purchase window (March–August) that follows the season launch. It attracts highly motivated legacy users determined to secure packages and retain their seats, motivated enough to tolerate a high-friction interface. Single-ticket buyers, generally new or infrequent users, have no such patience: with far less at stake, they have little reason to push through friction at all.

User Journey

Friction across our digital ecosystem is not distributed equally. By tracking four main archetypes, we can understand how a user’s specific intent dictates exactly where they will encounter barriers and abandon the funnel.

4 User Archetypes

  • A returning subscriber who wants the exact same subscription as before with little to no changes.

  • A returning or new subscriber who builds a custom Choose-Your-Own (CYO) bundle for greater flexibility.

  • A new user converting exclusively because of Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural season.

  • Any single ticket buyer who accidentally enters the subscription funnel because of onsale timing.

Cohort 01

New Visitors

  • Majority of Traffic
    Drove the vast majority of launch-day visits.

  • High Motivation
    Drawn to the ecosystem by massive external press and cultural momentum.

  • System Unfamiliarity
    Had zero prior experience navigating the platform's booking mechanics.

  • Lacking Mental Models
    Struggled with complex ticketing structures, package tiers, and onsale cadences.

Cohort 02

Returning Visitors

  • Highly Loyal Core
    Consisted of returning patrons with long-term platform relationships.

  • Extreme Persistence
    Logged on early and repeatedly refreshed the page leading up to the 10:00 AM launch.

  • High-Value Intent
    Focused specifically on securing premium, customized subscription packages.

  • Strong Mental Models
    Leveraged prior platform experience to bypass early landing page friction.

Enters Funnel via Landing Pages

1

59.83% of new users bounced because they expected immediate single tickets but could only access subscription packages.

First-Time Super-Fan seeing friction at the top of the funnel. Searching for "Dudamel" returns zero results.

Single Ticket Buyers who are unfamiliar with onsale timing drop off on the homepage because there is no clear path to purchase for them.

50.24% of return users advanced because their learned behavior and familiarity with the web structure.

The Flex Buyer and The Loyalist must navigate a season guide with a print-first approach

The Loyalist who skips the season guide begins a ping-pong click path between packages, which does not reduce the effort even though its a web-first approach

Seat Selection

2

97.59% conversion wall for new users due to a dense, mobile-unfriendly seating chart paired with unexpected launch-day premium pricing.

The Flex Buyer who is a new user bears the brunt of this phase. Because they spend significant time manually customizing a 4-concert package while navigating a clunky interface, they run into session timeouts that completely erase their manual labor.

92.98% drop-off, proving the desktop-first seating chart was a systemic layout flaw that even return users would not tolerate.

The Loyalist expects renewal to mean effortlessly keeping their seats. Instead, they hit a confusing, unrewarding seat map, and trust breaks despite years of loyalty.

Checkout & Payment

3

31 new users reached the checkout page; mobile traffic drop-off heavily outpaced desktop here.

The First-Time Super-Fan who is international faces active exclusion, blocked by fields that do not accommodate international billing.

The Single-Ticket Buyer has added a CYO-eligible concert to their cart, only to discover at checkout they can't proceed without adding more concerts.

94 returning users reached the checkout page, mostly on desktop.

The Loyalist and The Flex Buyer as returning users understand the interface is easier to use on desktop than mobile for this kind of task.

The Flex Buyer who has put forth a great amount of effort curating their selection of concerts and seat experiences a punishing timeout, erasing all of their progress.

Conversion & Post-Purchase

4

0.78% total conversion rate of the 130 new users who entered the purchase path shows high buying intent, so the problem wasn’t a lack of interest.

2.85% of the returning users who entered the purchase path, made it to checkout. Saved account info and platform familiarity kept them in the funnel.

Content Strategy

By identifying the user’s friction points within the seat map, bundling/booking rules, and the site wide messaging, this research provided the UX insights needed to transform an unintuitive transaction flow.

Redesign Recommendations

  • Bring pricing tiers and seat selection above the fold, and extend the SYOS interactive map to Best Available selection so mobile users aren't scrolling between radio buttons and a static seat map just to find their section.

    Goal: Remove the 97.59% mobile conversion wall by designing an interface built for small viewports.

  • Users face jarring inconsistencies: specific seat selection is completely disabled in Curated Series, blocked via certain Choose-Your-Own (CYO) tools, but allowed if a CYO package is built directly from the calendar layout.

    Goal: Create a consistent system for seat selection so users never have to guess when or how they can choose their seats.

  • Rename curated packages to reflect what's actually in them, reduce the number of screens needed to see a package's contents, and let users compare packages across different series. Add images and descriptive copy so what's in a series, and what's in each package within it, is immediately clear.

    Goal: Reduce the research burden that currently pushes undecided buyers to abandon before they ever reach checkout.

  • Implement a cohort-aware content strategy during the subscription windows, offering lead generation and discovery-driven pathways upon entry.

    Goal: Capture the 59.83% of first-time visitors who currently bounce immediately upon encountering subscription-only messaging.

  • Explore Our Events is one of the site's five most-visited pages, but it functions as a rabbit hole of landing pages disconnected from the season guide and subscription packages.

    Goal: Turn Explore Our Events into an entry point that leads somewhere, connecting event discovery directly to the season guide and package-building flow instead of dead-ending.

  • Users currently build a Choose-Your-Own package inside the cart itself, where a session timeout can erase everything they've selected.

    Goal: Let users favorite or save shows as they go, so a CYO package can be built before it ever touches the cart, and a timeout costs nothing.

  • Single-ticket buyers can add a CYO-eligible concert to their cart from the calendar without realizing they've started building a subscription, only discovering at checkout that they can't complete the purchase without adding more concerts.

    Goal: Make clear at the point of adding to cart whether a user is buying a single ticket or starting a subscription package, before they invest more time.

  • Initial data confirms that the strict rules, mandatory packages, and complex pricing tiers built into the system created their own layer of bottlenecks.

    Goal: Uncover how backend business rules are creating usability bottlenecks, allowing us to refactor the entire subscription checkout flow from the ground up.

Impact & Takeaways

Three of the eight recommendations ship in Phase 01 (September 2026). Each went through weekly Figma reviews before build, where recommendations turned into real interface decisions, then moved into QA testing to identify bugs and improve usability.

Mobile-Optimized Seat Selection

A redesigned Select-Your-Own-Seat interface ships in Phase 01 to align with single-ticket onsales. This is a chance to test the new interactive features and see how they could translate to Best Available screens.

  • Don't create a roadmap in isolation; build on what already supports the product well.

Connect Discovery to Subscriptions

Explore Our Events is being replaced by a toggle between the calendar and a new What's On page, so users move between browsing events and browsing the calendar from the same place instead of landing in a disconnected page. Categories on the new page use Netflix-style horizontal scrollers, letting users browse a dense amount of content in a more consolidated format. Tracking how users move from those scrollers to event detail pages, landing pages, or their cart will inform how we categorize and build taxonomy for event types going forward, and could lead to a more comprehensive web-first approach for the next season launch.

  • Data from tracking how users actually move through the new discovery flow can drive next season's event taxonomy and structure.

Re-evaluate CYO Building

Favoriting was presented to us by our external partners, who work with other arts organizations. With this feature, users can save any concert to reference later via their account. This structure has the potential to streamline the CYO selection process by allowing the user to bookmark something without adding it to their cart. This can help prevent the session timeout pain point. Tracking the behavior as users familiarize themselves with the feature gives us real feedback to weigh against the CYO tool's known pain points.

There are two potential frameworks to build on: a CYO-specific bookmarking function similar to the favoriting, and letting users build a package with the event calendar, discovery page, and CYO building in one place.

  • Partners working across the industry can bring frameworks for solutions that you may not have considered.