What makes it worth reading
How I turned an existing kids’ activity platform into a subscription offering, connecting user motivation with a sustainable commercial model.
Impact
5,000+ subscribers
£40k+ MRR
All within 3 months
Project Overview
GoPlay is Xplora’s activity and rewards platform for children, using smartwatch activity, challenges and rewards to motivate kids to move more.
The platform already had engagement. But continuing to develop and maintain it required a more sustainable business model beyond existing revenue streams.
As Lead Product Designer, I initiated and led the design of GoPlay Premium — from understanding what users would value enough to pay for, to defining the proposition, subscription experience and launch.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Year
2023
Before designing screens, I led the team in researching user needs, pain points and motivations around the GoPlay experience.
I then brought those insights together with the commercial goals behind Premium. That gave us a simple lens for evaluating ideas:
Would this create meaningful additional value for the user?
and
Would that value support a sustainable subscription business?
That moved the conversation away from: “What features can we put behind Premium?”
Towards: “What would make Premium feel like a worthwhile upgrade?”
Premium couldn’t feel like a commercial layer pasted on top of the existing product. The subscription journey therefore needed to work naturally inside GoPlay.
The experience connected: Discover Premium → Understand the benefits → Choose → Subscribe → Start using Premium
The subscription CTA was made visible enough to create awareness, while the surrounding experience explained why upgrading mattered.
That distinction was important.
The paywall was not the product.
The value users understood before reaching it was.
The research and business requirements shaped five areas of the Premium experience.
01 — Make the value clear: Premium needed a prominent and understandable proposition so users could see what they gained by upgrading.
I designed clear subscription entry points and benefit communication around the experience.
02 — Give families choice: We explored a tiered subscription structure rather than forcing every user into the same offer.
03 — Make joining effortless: Once someone decided Premium was right for them, the onboarding experience needed to get out of the way. I focused on creating a simple transition from existing GoPlay user to Premium subscriber.
04— Make the experience more personal: Premium also explored personalised recommendations across challenges, rewards, marketplace items using user behaviour and preferences to make the experience more relevant.
05 — Give users reasons to keep progressing: Gamified progression created opportunities for users to move through the experience and unlock additional rewards.
The model became: Join → Discover value → Progress → Unlock more → Keep returning.
Launching without dedicated marketing
GoPlay Premium launched without a dedicated marketing campaign. That gave us a particularly useful early signal: adoption was being driven primarily through the product itself rather than paid acquisition.
Within the first three months with no dedicated marketing:
5,000+
Subscribers
£40k+
Monthly recurring revenue
The early uptake showed strong demand for the proposition and established Premium as a new recurring-revenue stream for GoPlay.
Better UX didn’t just increase engagement. This time, it created a business model.
The launch proved that users could discover and convert to Premium organically.
The next opportunity was therefore less about proving the proposition and more about increasing distribution.
Potential growth levers included:
01 — Targeted campaigns
02 — Referral programmes
03 — Influencer partnerships
04 — Limited-time promotions
05 — Content marketing
The product had demonstrated demand. The next question was how far that demand could scale with deliberate acquisition behind it.
GoPlay Premium reinforced that subscription design is not primarily a paywall problem.
It is a value-proposition problem.
The work started by understanding what users valued, connected that to a sustainable commercial model, and then designed the proposition, conversion journey and ongoing experience around it.
The commercial result followed from that foundation: 5,000+ subscribers and £40k+ MRR within three months, without dedicated launch marketing.
Keep exploring
