Making Premium discoverable without putting journalism behind a paywall
The Guardian needed to grow digital subscription revenue while maintaining its commitment to freely accessible journalism. As the sole designer embedded in the Revenue team, I redesigned the app's navigation to make Premium features easier to discover while balancing competing editorial, commercial and user priorities.
- Role
- UX Designer
- Period
- 4 months
- READ TIME
- 8 min
- +17%
- Click-through to Premium subscription
- +4%
- Premium subscriptions
- 1 month
- Post-launch measurement window
Growing revenue without closing off the news
The Guardian was exploring ways to build sustainable digital revenue while maintaining its commitment to keeping journalism freely accessible.
Premium was an early attempt to introduce paid digital experiences through the app. Users could subscribe for access to additional features including Live and Discover.
Premium conversion, however, was below expectations.
“How do we grow digital subscription revenue?”
“How might we make Premium more discoverable without compromising the core Guardian experience?”
Navigation was identified as the intervention point. As the sole designer embedded in the Revenue team — working alongside Product, Engineering, Commercial/Subscriptions, Editorial and Data & Analytics — I owned the navigation redesign.
Finding the problem hiding in plain sight
My initial heuristic review identified a specific discoverability problem. At the top of the existing app, Discover appeared to the left of The Guardian title and Live appeared to the right:
Discover | The Guardian | Live
The Premium controls did not look sufficiently interactive. A user could read the three elements as a single masthead phrase — "Discover The Guardian Live" — rather than recognising Live and Discover as separate, tappable Premium destinations.
If users don't recognise Live and Discover as interactive Premium features, they may never reach the point where they understand their value or consider subscribing.
One navigation, competing priorities
Navigation space had competing demands. I interviewed senior stakeholders to understand what each group believed the navigation needed to achieve.
| Stakeholder | Navigation priority |
|---|---|
| Editorial | Guardian journalism and sections appropriately represented |
| Commercial | Premium features clearly visible and accessible |
| Users | A simple, understandable navigation model |
| Engineering | Feasibility within platform and timeline constraints |
| iOS & Android | Respect for each platform's own conventions |
Rather than allowing competing opinions to dictate the design, I converted recurring stakeholder concerns into a scoring framework — asking each group to rate the relative importance of these criteria before any concept was proposed.
You only have room for a few things.
What gets priority?
The navigation had to serve editorial, commercial and user needs at the same time. You can't give everything equal prominence.
Choose 3 items for the primary navigation.
Select 3 items above
See how we resolved it.
The same tension — editorial, commercial and user needs competing for the same space — shaped every design decision in the navigation redesign.
Designing the solution together
I ran a design workshop with Engineering, Creative Design and Commercial, structured around the discoverability hypothesis. The group ranked navigation features by importance and agreed on the primary journeys the new navigation would need to serve.
Three directions emerged
The group split into teams to sketch their versions of The Guardian's future navigation. Three distinct concepts emerged from the session.
Premium-first
A top-navigation approach giving Live and Discover greater prominence — directly addressing the discoverability hypothesis identified in the heuristic review.
Editorial-first
A top-navigation approach exposing Guardian editorial sections — News, Opinion, Sport and Culture — as the primary navigation model.
New navigation model
A bottom-navigation approach with a central floating action button and clearer, dedicated access to Live and Discover as distinct destinations.
Testing opinions against behaviour
The three concepts were wireframed and tested with six Guardian users. Participants rated each concept against four criteria: Usable, Desirable, Functional and Complementary.
Concept 3 emerged as the preferred direction. Users responded positively to Live and Discover and indicated that these areas felt new to them — because they had not previously discovered them at all. They also found the bottom navigation simpler and less cluttered.
Features that already existed felt new once people could actually discover them.
When evidence challenged stakeholder preference
Some stakeholders had become attached to Concept 2 — the editorial-led direction — and questioned the validity of the testing when the results favoured a different approach.
Rather than arguing for the preferred solution, I presented recordings from the usability sessions in which Guardian users explained their preferences in their own words. This moved the discussion away from internal opinion and back towards customer evidence.
Bring the customer's voice into the room.
From concepts to final navigation
Concept 3 established the direction, but we didn't simply ship it unchanged. The final navigation combined the strongest elements from all three concepts.
Implementation across iOS and Android required working through platform-specific constraints with engineering. Some interaction behaviours and journey flows were adjusted to fit each platform without changing the navigation hierarchy itself.
“Live and Discover sat in the masthead — easy to read as part of the header title rather than as tappable Premium features.”
“Live and Discover surfaced as distinct, unmistakably interactive destinations in the bottom navigation.”
One month after launch
Post-launch analytics showed a 17% increase in click-through from Live and Discover to the subscription page, and a 4% increase in Premium subscriptions.
- +17%
- Click-through from Live and Discover to the Premium subscription page
- +4%
- Premium subscriptions
The features hadn't changed. Their discoverability had.
Navigation is a product decision, not just a design one
The Guardian project showed me that navigation — often treated as a structural detail — can be a direct lever for commercial outcomes. The Premium features were already there. Users simply weren't finding them.
What made the project work wasn't the visual design. It was the process: converting competing stakeholder opinions into a shared framework, testing concepts against real users, and using customer evidence to resolve disagreements rather than personal conviction.
I was the sole designer on the Revenue team, reporting to the Lead UX Designer. The process required input from every part of the organisation — Product, Engineering, Commercial/Subscriptions, Editorial and Data & Analytics. The shared scoring framework gave each group a stake in the outcome before any solution was on the table.
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