Spotify: Celebrating Cultural Moments (Ramadan)

Creating a localised product experience to increase retention and Premium subscriptions.

Problem

Spotify didn’t recognise Ramadan in non-western markets, and retention dropped, particularly in Egypt, by 20-30% during this period because users didn’t feel like Spotify related to them and gave them the content they wanted to consume.

Goal

Drive 100K MAU and 10K subscriptions
Increase the number of engaged users during this period by 1M

Solution

Create a localised product experience that celebrates this cultural moment.

My process

During Discovery, I used existing insights to understand users' needs and pain points with the current experience and to identify the most effective areas to highlight the main themes of Ramadan for each market and the frequency.

Through leading workshops with Marketing to define themes for each market, I established the tone of voice and keywords to use. These workshops allowed me to understand the importance of the themes and tone—especially as Indonesia was more playful. They spent the fasting period seeking entertainment and then Iftar socialising with friends, while in MENA (UAE, Egypt), users would listen to religious content while fasting and spend Iftar with family watching Ramadan TV series.

I worked with the Product Designer to create two versions of the entry point on Home—one for the day and one for the night—to reflect the importance of the time of day during Ramadan. Insights and my workshops confirmed that it was essential to highlight playlists and podcasts, as they were the most appealing content to users during and after breaking fast.

The hub was the most significant opportunity identified because it reflected the themes related to the users and met their need to find content that helped them observe Ramadan.

I designed the hub description, section headings and overall content hierarchy to relate to the main themes established during workshops
Relatable keywords were used to highlight what users would most be interested in during that time of day.

To drive impact further in the project, I designed wireframes for interactive stories that would be accessed through the Daily Offering section on the hub to highlight further the weekly themes that were identified and would relate to the activities or feelings in that moment of Ramadan.

Insights from a previous messaging test during Ramadan showed that notifications were essential to driving users to the app. Therefore this was used as another way to highlight the identified weekly themes and push relevant content.