Forbes Accolades Licensing & Logo Purchase

Role: Lead Product Designer

Timeline: 12 Weeks

Platform: Desktop & Mobile Web

Team: Designer (Me), 2 Product Managers, 6 Developers

Summary

The monetization of Forbes Accolades was restricted by an outdated, manual sales workflow. Despite qualifying for prestigious lists, professionals faced a high-friction process that required direct sales intervention just to purchase licensing rights. This project transitioned the business to a self-service Product-Led Growth model, introducing a "smart paywall" capable of handling complex bundling logic. By automating the journey from verification to asset delivery, we unlocked immediate revenue streams and eliminated the operational bottleneck of manual fulfillment.

Role & Scope

Title: Lead Product Designer

I drove the end-to-end design process, from initial discovery through final UI/UX for the subscription experience. I facilitated sessions with Forbes’ Growth, Product, and Engineering teams, conducted user interviews, analyzed analytics, mapped out user flows, created low-fidelity wireframes, designed high-fidelity screens, built interactive prototypes, and ran A/B tests and usability sessions to refine the solution.

Design Challenge

The old subscription journey was fragmented forcing users through multiple disjointed screens for account creation and checkout. Confusion, context-switching, and lack of trust led to a 67% drop-off before purchase. A rigid third-party system made it impossible to improve the flow or test changes.

Context

Forbes Accolades creates prestigious lists (e.g., "America’s Top Wealth Advisors," "Best-in-State CPAs"). Historically, when a professional made a list, purchasing the rights to use the official Forbes logo was a high-touch, manual process managed entirely by the Sales and Growth teams.

The Friction Points

Dead Ends: The existing "Claim & Verify" flow had no purchase capability for logos.

Operational Drag: The Growth team was manually processing credit cards and emailing zip files of logos to customers one by one.
Lost Revenue: Small-to-medium transactions were often deprioritized by sales teams chasing larger corporate accounts (invoicing >$25k), leaving significant revenue on the table.

System Design & Product Logic

This project was not a simple UX "rethink." It required a fundamental re-architecture of how Forbes defines a "product" in the backend. Before designing the screens, I worked with Engineering to map the "Eligibility Matrix."

The onboarding flow was incomplete. Users could onboard via "Claim & Verify," but the "Purchase" step was disjointed.

Friction: Users interested in licensing had to wait for sales outreach.
Operational Load: The Accolades Growth team was manually managing transactions and emailing logo files to customers one by one.
Limited Options: The existing flow only supported Premium Profile purchases, ignoring the high-demand "Logo only" or "Logo + Profile" bundles.

The Decoupling Problem

In the legacy database, "Profiles" and "Logos" were often conflated or treated as binary states. However, the new PLG model required granular separation:

Variable Rules: Not all lists are equal. Some lists (e.g., Shook Wealth Advisors) allow Profile purchases; others only allow Logo licensing.
The "Mixed Bundle" Edge Case: We needed to support scenarios where a user purchases a Premium Profile (a digital subscription) that includes a Logo License (a static asset) as a perk.

Design Decision

We needed a modular paywall architecture. The frontend couldn't just be a static pricing page; it had to be a dynamic component that rendered different cards (Logo Only, Profile Only, or Bundle) based on the specific API response regarding the user's list eligibility.

Why It Mattered

After synthesizing the workshop findings, user feedback, and competitive insights, it became clear that the new flow must directly address the pain points that were turning users away. By resolving each of these issues, we could significantly improve the experience.

Opportunity

We identified a significant bottleneck: Users could "Claim and Verify" their profile digitally, but they hit a dead end when trying to buy licensing rights. There was no self-service checkout. This resulted in lost revenue from smaller entities and excessive manual data entry for the Growth team.

Solution

We transformed a high-friction, manual sales workflow into a fully automated, self-service commerce engine. By decoupling product logic from the sales team, we built a modular "Smart Paywall" that dynamically generates custom purchasing options based on a user's specific award ranking. This shift enabled immediate revenue capture for transactional accounts while freeing the growth team to focus on high-value enterprise deals.

Core UX Improvements

Smart Eligibility Routing: An intelligent "Orientation Modal" that automatically detects a user's award status and guides them to the correct product mix (Logo vs. Profile) to prevent dead ends.

Dynamic Bundle Logic: A unified checkout architecture that allows users to purchase complex "mixed bundles" (e.g., Profile + Logo + Reprint) in a single, seamless transaction.
Tangible Value Tiering: Visualized abstract licensing rights into clear "Gold vs. Silver" product tiers with scannable usage checklists to reduce decision anxiety and build trust.
Instant Asset Fulfillment: Transformed the post-purchase experience from a manual zip-file email into a permanent "Logos Hub" for immediate, recurring access to all file formats.

Outcomes

$1.4M

Revenue generated through self checkout for logos.

42%

Decrease in customer support issues.

17%

Increase in upsells vs regular product purchases.

You've made it to the footer. Please reach out if you have any questions. Currently open for work in US & India.

The website is currently available only on desktop.