Lingopie music
creating, rethinking, and integrating to drive growth.
Lingopie is a platform that helps users learn languages through TV shows and movies, aiming to make the process engaging and effective. In this project, we came up with a sub-product developed by merging music's universal appeal with Lingopie’s language-learning technology. My focus was on creating a user-friendly interface with simplified versions of existing features to support conversion intent, while also guiding the marketing and motion design teams.
Date:
2021
Role:
UX/ UI, branding, art direction.
Team:
Problem statement
Our dependence on paid marketing channels, like social media ads and Google campaigns, led to unsustainable costs, with limited organic growth (~20%). We needed to identify alternative methods to increase exposure and attract new users without relying primarily on paid strategies.
Goals
Increase organic traffic to hosted pages without paid marketing.
Boost monthly unique visitors and subscriptions on YouTube and TikTok.
Solution
Since music is universally loved, and people often watch and replay their favorite videos, we saw an opportunity. We combined Lingopie's language-learning tech with music videos for the Lingopie Music project, believing that music's repetitive nature matches perfectly with the repetition needed for language learning. Plus, it helps users learn the way the language is actually spoken, with everyday slang and natural conversation.
research
During a brainstorming session with the CEO, head of product, product manager, and head of R&D, we identified key challenges for the sub-product. Drawing on user feedback from our existing platform, we anticipated both technical and product-related issues. While some challenges were left to the R&D team, we focused on finding solutions on the product side to support their efforts.
Pain points
We managed to extract some key pain-points that indicates users either don't perceive value in the platform or feel overwhelmed by the experience.
Competitor analysis
While the R&D team handled technical issues, Product Manager Inna Nemenman and I focused on shaping the platform’s concept and strategy. We conducted a detailed analysis comparing some music platforms - Spotify, MTV, Genius, Youtube to identify gaps in the market and how we can provide an engaging user experience to address the key pain-points. We decided on a hybrid free product, inspired by our existing catalog.
design decisions
The R&D team chose to integrate our video player on top of YouTube’s player infrastructure, allowing us to deliver user value quickly and address technical challenges on the go. Therefore, we prioritized the design of the song page first. Following that, we launched the artist, playlist, and language pages, and then the homepage. This strategy enabled us to effectively manage technical constraints while providing a functional product in preparation for a large-scale content upload.
Design principles
Limited experience
Free users would have access to only basic features that offer "aha" moments, except for the flashcards feature, encouraging registration.
Unlocking premium features on mobile web pop-up.
Marketing elements integration
Product guides
Each page would feature a section highlighting the benefits of using Lingopie for language learning.
Push to premium approach
A fixed header and some cool banners with a CTA would be displayed across the platform to drive conversions.
Many different pages
To increase brand awareness, and let users feel there is a big library for them to explore, we created a verity of different pages publicly accessible and added a share button, allowing users to spread the word organically.
As was decided before, we added fixed CTA buttons to drive to the registration flow and included extra marketing sections and banners on some pages.
More suggestions
Once I felt I had the marketing challenge under control during the sketching phase, I felt I had to align with some essential music product standards. To improve user interaction and create a sense of continuity, I introduced a "more suggestions" feature - displayed as a carousel on desktop and a drawer on mobile, plus added an auto-play functionality. This helped users explore more and aligned with industry standards, and we successfully launched it in the first version.
Answering marketing & SEO needs
We gave our marketing team the tools to promote the sub-brand on social media and blogs, as it's the best way to go viral. I oversaw our marketing designer and motion editors to ensure the desired look and feel. We decided to stick with our current look but add a pop of color to reinforce our brand.
It was challenging to make marketing and SEO stand out on the website pages, while keeping the user experience in mind and driving new users to the paid product. For example, on mobile web, the video player opens in a separate page for learning, with only a banner for marketing.
Results & Iterations
Missed KPIs and Initial Goals
Not all projects hit their main KPIs, and this was one of those cases. While the UX was solid, the goal of going viral and boosting brand awareness wasn't fully realized. The project's success relied heavily on SEO and marketing efforts which didn’t achieve the desired results. However, we believed the core concept of using repeatable songs for language learning was strong, just not the right fit for the initial platform.
Pivoting to Premium Integration
As a result, we pivoted by integrating the music sub-product into the premium product for subscribed users. This allowed us to incorporate more key features missing from the free version and provide a more comprehensive, user-friendly experience. Some of them were easy to apply like removing the marketing sections and banners and some required some more adjustments.
Second round results
At the time of this integration, other major features like the Chrome Netflix extension were the focus of marketing efforts. However, we observed that users saw value in the concept of music as a learning tool. We also realized that most of our music users prefer interacting with the product via the mobile app, which highlights the importance of deeper integration within that platform.
2nd
most visited sub-catalog (excluding the main)
3rd
leading source of watch videos (retention)
Onboarding flow
Boosting user engagement with an improved onboarding.
Conversion optimization • User flow
Watch and learn
Bridging passive watching and active learning to cut churn.
User research • Micro-animation
Smart word system
Optimizing vocabulary management with intuitive tools to boost engagement.
Complex system • Competitive analysis • User-centered design
