Sling’s Channel Shopper
Sling is a live television streaming subscription service, operating in the United States and offering hundreds of major and specialty channels. Customers can watch their favorite shows, games, movies, reality programming, and news coverage on connected TVs, in a Web browser, or on a mobile app.
The business challenge that drove this feature was confusion expressed by our prospective customers about the channels included in our various live TV subscription plans.
Watching the TV you love can be pretty fun (genAI)
Customer Need
We knew from Consumer Insights’ surveys and from interviews with prospective customers that the biggest factor in first-use success (watching TV on the service for the first time) was the customer getting the channels they expected in the plan to which they just subscribed.
Challenge
The browsing UX on Sling.com was designed to require customers to first select a plan, then get informed on which channels were included in that plan in their Cart. We hypothesized that this selection step was too late in the shopping process.
The Channel Shopper UI
Approach
Our user experience decision was to “invert the pyramid” and allow customers to shop for the enterainment they know, in this case by channels. The feature allows customers to select their favorite channels, and then use that customer-driven combination to recommend a Sling plan. The logic also applies a lowest-cost calculation, consistent with the brand’s value proposition.
Results
Customers who use Channel Shopper convert at a rate that is 4x higher than those who do not use the feature in their browsing session. Additionally, these customers churn less, a key profitability goal for any subscription business.