Revamping Patreon
An unsolicited re-design of Patreon’s mobile fan experience
Introduction
An unsolicited redesign of Patreon, an application that allows fans to support their favorite creators through monthly membership subscriptions.
As an avid patron myself, I take a look at how to improve and modernize Patreon’s existing features, as well as propose strategic new features based on market and competitor research.
01/
Overview
Background
Patreon was founded to digitize the traditional patronage process for the modern era, connecting fans directly to their favorite creators.
Even as a big supporter of Patreon’s vision, I am consistently let down by the reality of their mobile app. For my support, I receive digital content — yet the variety of content and how I can interact with it is very limited. And due to the minimal features available on the app, my experience of trying to support creators felt more like an email subscription rather than a personal, positive experience.
I wasn’t alone in thinking this — fans all over the world want to support creators, but Patreon’s app was making it an unpleasant experience to do so:
Defining Goals
My experience led me to redesign Patreon’s app, rooted in this value proposition:
“Increase the value for patrons, and it will bring return on investment directly to creators. ”
I utilized personal experience as well as competitor and market research for my redesign, clearly outlining assumptions that I make in my case study. My redesign can be organized into four key suggestions:
Improve Discovery
Recreate how patrons can discover creators
Support Methods
Diversify how patrons can support creators
Post Interaction
Improve how patrons interact with content
Content Diversity
Diversify the content creators can share
Design Decisions
While I don’t have access to Patreon’s design system, I based my UI component designs based on similar color, button styles, and logo from Patreon’s app.
I took note of the geometric shapes that are used in Patreon’s logo and background textures and applied that theme throughout my designs.
I also extrapolated Patreon’s primary color orange from their logo and primary CTAs, and their use of a light blue for their secondary buttons.
02/
Discover Feed
Why make creators hard to find?
Patreon’s mobile app does not have any form of discover feed or suggested creators section. I’ve experienced many times when I would be surprised to find an artist that I liked actually had a Patreon, but I was unaware because I had missed their Instagram post on it or their Instagram description.
In fact, both Patreon and Buy me a Coffee (the only two competitors in the market that offers a mobile app) only allow users to search for creators by name or view a list of top creators, regardless of genre. Both apps also have the disappointing experience of landing on a blank homescreen upon sign up.
While users are likely to first join Patreon due to specific creators they want to support, I think it’s a missed opportunity to increase discoverability of similar creators. For example, Instagram’s suggested posts and accounts are especially effective for creative content.
I worked on improving Patreon’s initial onboarding experience and adding a dedicated discover feed, with the goal of helping new creators starting out as well as helping existing creators expand their fanbase.
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Support Methods
Take my money
Patreon has a clear emphasis on monthly subscriptions as a part of their branding. All creators on Patreon utilizes a tier system, based on monthly subscriptions. Depending on tier, patrons can access various levels of rewards, ranging from access to blog posts to physical goods or exclusive content for upper tiers. In my design, I explore diversifying the methods patrons can support and pay creators, based on market research.
I discovered that the key differentiating factor in Patreon’s competitors is how fans can support creators. In looking at the market, Patreon was the only one in the market to limit creators to just monthly subscriptions.
While monthly subscriptions are longer term and provide a stable base income for creators, my proposal is this:
“Allowing patrons to support creators in multiple ways could lead to higher earnings for creators. ”
In fact, creators are already doing this for themselves — there are many artists who opt to have Patreon, Gumroad, and Ko-Fi listed on their Linktree page or Instagram as ways for fans to support them.
Also, many creators that I support on Patreon mention steep drops in patrons towards the end of the month, right before the subscription renewal. With any subscription service, there are many customers who are not comfortable paying monthly and believe it’s a big commitment.
With patrons, users tend to judge month by month whether they will “subscribe” based on monthly previews. For these users, it’s more accurate to say they’re purchasing rewards monthly instead of subscribing. In fact, many artists have Gumroad or other e-store shops set up for patrons to purchase specific monthly rewards instead of subscribing.
If I worked at Patreon, I’d say let’s test it. Take volunteers from existing creators and see if a version of Patreon with more payment offerings increases revenue. If the answer is yes, Patreon would be strategically placed in the market as a one-stop shop for fans and creators alike.
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Content Interaction
Saving Content
Patreon’s homescreen is a feed of posts from my Creators in sequential order, much like any social media feed.
With Instagram, the reasons that users save posts are vast — it could be a post I liked, want to share, want to learn from, or a post that fits into a collection of saved posts, etc. With Patreon, it’s easier to infer why patrons would want to save posts.
I am making the assumption that while there are a lot of fans that come to Patreon just to support creators regardless of content, there are also many fans that want to learn a craft or access exclusive content.
If I were a Designer at Patreon, I would have surveyed users to discover what kind of content they expect and support creators for to deepen my understanding. But I am inferring that for patrons who have the goal of learning a craft or viewing exclusive content, saving posts gives them the flexibility to refer back to posts and view similar content across creators.
While I understand that from a development perspective, creating a place to store and access saved posts is actually a larger undertaking that it seems, I believe that it’s an important aspect of consuming creator content that will help users fulfill their user goals.
05/
Content Diversity
Live Streaming is the Future
There has been a clear trend in the social media market towards videos over static content. With the introduction of Tik Tok and then Instagram’s heavy investment into reels, creators were incentivized to create short, consumable videos.
With the rise of Twitch, YouTube and Facebook began entering the live streaming market, as a way for creators to connect to fans in a closer way than ever before.
Currently, if a Patreon creator wanted to offer paid-for live streaming, they would have to utilize Twitch or another existing service. This would mean that fans would have to pay for a live stream subscription in addition to the subscription they already pay for Patreon content.
Following my theme of Patreon as a all-in-one creator platform, I explored the completely greenfield feature of live streaming in my concept designs. One key aspect of my design was to include the ability to tip creators for their live stream, as another way for fans to show support for creators.
