The Problem

When SoulCycle hired me, I got placed on a team dedicated to increasing visitors' conversion rates into new customers or "riders." Upon arrival, my first order of business was to learn how the organization operated as a whole and advertise or sell the company to potential new riders. After a few months of learning, investigating, and user research, the team and I determined two significant entry barriers. The first issue was with the website; upon reaching the homepage, there was no mention of what SoulCycle was or what a class entailed. There was also no clear calls-to-action (CTAs) that pulled potential new riders into the sign-up process or even brought them to pertinent information about the offered classes. Secondly, if you wanted to sign up as a potential new rider, there was no step-by-step process to help you choose the best class for you. This was a massive problem in the NYC market, with over 1000 classes to choose from for any given week.

The Process

As we attempted to remedy these problems, the product manager and the engineering lead had daily conversations about what was happening and our next steps. These conversations mainly served to keep everyone on the team informed about what was in the works and push the project forward. After determining the critical user pain points or barriers to entry, we conferred with the VP of product and marketing to ensure everyone agreed with the core problems. As we moved forward, we had bi-weekly meetings with a cross-functional team from all aspects of the business as we wanted to completely re-do the homepage, which as with any company, was a high-profile page. We presented our findings and progressed each week as we iterated on the designs in close collaboration with the marketing & content teams. Once the cross-functional team agreed upon a design and information, we performed a series of user interviews and A/B tests on the old homepage and the new one to determine if we had made it more persuasive and easier to sign up for the first time. We also received a mandate to build the new homepage on top of a CMS system, which made sense. Still, it also extended the process as we had to vet multiple vendors and iterate on the design to fit the new CMS system's engineering capabilities.

The Conclusion

Up to this point, I had primarily worked at start-up companies that were very open and communicative about creating features and designs that would further the business. Unfortunately, this was not the case at SoulCycle, as it was primarily led through politics and egos. The homepage went from something that most agreed (and research confirmed) would dramatically increase our conversion rate of new riders to a basic page with a video reel, a quick message, and then the footer. We successfully implemented the CMS and two CTAs, but at this point, I already knew this was not an organization I wanted to stay at for the long term. After delivering the approved design, I decided to move to Colorado and pursue a freelance career.

Additional Work

During my time at SoulCycle, I also helped improve the onboarding process of the iOS app by walking new users through a multi-step wizard that helped filter down the list of possible classes available to them based on their preferences. I also worked very closely with a few engineers and the rest of the design team to create a design system that took into account all the mediums we worked on, including all retail and marketing initiatives.