Overview
At Virgin Media, I joined a cross-functional agile team with a clear mandate: improve the end-to-end customer acquisition experience and make the numbers move. This was a high-stakes, high-visibility part of the business – the digital acquisition journey was a primary revenue channel for one of the UK's largest telecoms providers.
Unlike many design roles, success here was measured in pounds. Every design decision had a direct, measurable commercial impact – which made rigour in testing and decision-making essential.
The challenge
Virgin Media's product comparison page was a critical decision point in the acquisition journey – the moment customers chose their bundle. Analytics showed high drop-off rates at this stage, but the data alone couldn't explain why. Customers were landing, looking and leaving.
The broader challenge was systemic: the acquisition journey had grown organically over several years, with pages and components added in response to individual business needs rather than a coherent customer experience. The result was a journey that felt disjointed and failed to build the confidence customers needed to convert.
"Analytics told us where customers were leaving. Design research told us why. The combination of both is what made the difference."
My approach
Funnel analysis & opportunity sizing
Worked with the Analytics team to build a detailed picture of the acquisition funnel – mapping drop-off rates, rage-clicks, scroll depth and time-on-page at each stage. This helped identify where the biggest opportunities sat and informed where to focus design effort first.
Qualitative research
Ran remote usability sessions to understand the reasoning behind the drop-offs. Customers consistently cited confusion about what was included in each bundle and uncertainty about the commitment they were making. Trust and clarity emerged as the core design problems.
Hypothesis-driven design
Translated research findings into a set of prioritised design hypotheses. Each hypothesis had a clear rationale, a defined metric for success and a realistic estimate of uplift based on current funnel data. This created shared accountability between design, product and commercial stakeholders.
A/B testing programme
Built and ran a structured A/B testing programme across the comparison page. Tests covered information hierarchy, bundle naming, price presentation, social proof and call-to-action design. Each test was run to statistical significance before any decision was made.
Design system foundation
Partnered with Senior Design to establish a comprehensive design system for the acquisition journey. Standardising components and patterns reduced design inconsistency, sped up future iteration cycles and made the testing programme more efficient.
Outcomes
The redesign of the product comparison page delivered the most significant revenue impact of any single UX initiative in the team's history at that point.
$1.5M
What I learned
This project shaped how I think about the relationship between data and design. Data without design insight produces incremental optimisation. Design without data produces beautiful things that don't necessarily work. The combination – qualitative understanding of why customers behave as they do, paired with rigorous quantitative testing – is where real impact happens.
Building the design system alongside the testing programme also taught me the compounding value of shared components. As we shipped winning test variants, we weren't starting from scratch each time – we were building on a growing library of proven patterns. It made the team faster and the experience more coherent at the same time.