DPG Media
DPG Media: verticals, sales pages and a design system for 30+ brands
Launching new verticals, optimizing sales pages hypothesis-driven and expanding a multi-brand design system for the largest publisher in the Netherlands.
Within DPG Media's Circulation department (AD, de Volkskrant, Het Parool, Libelle and many other brands) I launched new verticals such as lossebladen.nl and bladopproef.nl, rebranded bladcadeau.nl, and optimized the sales pages of all brands with CRO specialists through hypothesis-driven A/B tests. The multi-brand design system with design tokens made campaigns scalable across dozens of brands.
The problem
DPG Media sells subscriptions and single editions for dozens of newspaper and magazine brands. Each brand has its own audience and visual identity, but the underlying processes (subscribing, gifting, ordering single editions) are largely the same. The Circulation department wanted to open new sales channels and improve conversion on existing sales pages, without every brand reinventing the wheel.
My role
As senior UX designer in Circulation’s compact UX team I was responsible for the UX and UI of the verticals, sales pages, campaigns and the design system. I worked in a multidisciplinary setup with UX researchers, CRO specialists, content specialists and developers.
The process
Verticals: from business goal to live product
For lossebladen.nl, bladopproef.nl and the rebranding of bladcadeau.nl I independently facilitated the entire double diamond: collecting business goals and requirements, user interviews and journeys in the discover phase, personas and user stories in define, tested wireframes and prototypes in develop, and final UI plus multi-brand components in the design system at delivery. After go-live we kept monitoring and iterating with A/B tests.
Sales pages: hypothesis in, evidence out
With the CRO specialists I kept a tight rhythm: user interviews and behavioral data to expose where visitors get stuck, hypotheses formulated on those findings, variants designed and proven or rejected through A/B tests. One example: users did not understand the USPs on the sales pages. Hypothesis: if it is visible that USPs are clickable, users will find the explanation in the modal. We tested two variants (partially underlined and in color versus an information icon) and the winning variant went live for all brands. This rhythm demonstrably increased conversion and revenue.
Design system: design once, roll out dozens of times
I helped build the multi-brand design system: complex components, guidelines and design tokens per brand. One campaign template plus token sets plus per-brand content meant scalable campaigns: developers rolled out a new brand campaign without custom work. That is how we helped connect about 30 additional brands to the online marketing machine.
The solution
Three new or renewed verticals, continuously optimized sales pages for all brands, and a design system with tokens that keeps campaigns and products consistent and scalable across dozens of brands.
Results
The verticals run live and are iterated on continuously. The hypothesis-driven testing cycle increased conversion and revenue on the sales pages. And the design system gave the compact UX team its time back for the more complex problems.
What I take away
A small team can serve a large organization if you design the system instead of the individual screens. Design tokens and shared components were not a designer hobby here but the reason 30 brands could be connected without 30 times the work.
What the client says
“In the more than 1.5 years that we have worked together, I have gotten to know Roxanne as a driven UX designer who works hard and knows how to deal with the dynamics of the online market. Some of Roxanne's deliverables have been lossebladen.nl and bladcadeau.nl. In addition, she has collaborated a lot with our CRO specialists and designed several A/B tests for our sales pages. Roxanne is a very pleasant person to work with and has helped us enormously in the onboarding of about 30 extra brands in our 'online marketing machine'.”