STC: Building digital membership experiences

When this project started, STC's membership offering was largely built around conversations happening inside the gym. Staff helped customers navigate different membership types, pricing structures, add-ons, and eligibility rules - something that was difficult to replicate in a digital environment.

At the same time, online signup was becoming increasingly important. The challenge wasn't simply creating a checkout flow, but helping people understand what they were buying and feel confident in their decision without relying on staff guidance.

Working closely with STC's team, I focused on simplifying the membership structure, improving pricing transparency, and creating a clearer path from exploring membership options to completing a purchase online.

A long-term design partnership

This project was part of a broader collaboration with STC spanning several years. During that time, I worked closely with stakeholders across product, business, and technology, helping shape digital services, explore new opportunities, and improve the overall customer experience across both web and mobile platforms.

The membership journey featured in this case became one of the most impactful initiatives (550% increase in online signups), but it was built on years of collaboration, customer feedback, experimentation, and continuous product development.

“Hannah was a central part of taking STC’s digital business to the next level and helped lay the foundation for our continued expansion.”

Mika Omilian
Former CX Managager STC

Understanding the complexity

A membership system shaped by years of business rules, local variations and customer needs

The complexity behind STC’s membership offering was not new to us. Over several years of working together, we had explored many of the same questions with STC’s stakeholders: how memberships should be structured, how pricing could be made clearer, and how different rules, locations, campaigns, and customer needs could be supported without overwhelming the user.

This phase became a more active step in that ongoing work. STC’s offering included different membership levels, regional pricing models, payment options, add-ons, campaigns, and club-specific access rules. Some training concepts and facilities were only available at selected clubs and sometimes only included in higher-tier memberships.

Rather than treating this as a checkout problem, we approached it as a continuation of a larger effort: making STC’s membership model easier to understand, compare, and purchase online.

Creating a simpler foundation

A fragmented membership structure, reduced into a clearer set of core choices

A large part of the work focused on finding a balance between flexibility and clarity.

Together with stakeholders, we looked at how the existing structure could be grouped into a smaller set of core offerings while still supporting different customer needs, locations, and membership conditions.

The goal wasn't to remove choice, but to make choice easier to navigate. This work also helped establish a clearer foundation for how memberships could be presented consistently across the digital experience.

The final UI screens shown here were created by a UI designer, based on high-fidelity UX screens, flows, wireframes, pricing logic, and UX direction I developed.

Designing for clarity and trust

Designing a flow where every choice had a clear and predictable outcome

Pricing became a central design consideration throughout the project.

Customers needed to understand not only what each membership included, but also how their choices affected the final cost. Add-ons, city-specific pricing, age restrictions, and membership conditions all had to be communicated in a way that felt clear and predictable.

A guiding principle throughout the work was that users should never feel surprised by the outcome of their choices. Instead of asking users to interpret complex pricing logic, the experience was designed to make those relationships visible as decisions were being made.

From exploration to purchase

Connecting price exploration and purchase into one continuous journey

Previously, the pricing overview and purchase flow existed as largely separate experiences.

One of the key improvements was creating a more connected journey between understanding membership options and completing a signup.

Users could move directly from comparing memberships into the purchase flow, while the experience adapted to the choices they made along the way. This made it possible to keep the flow flexible without overwhelming users with unnecessary information.

Outcome

550% increase in online signups

The redesigned experience contributed to a significant increase in online membership signups, helping support STC's shift towards digital sales.

Perhaps more importantly, it established a clearer structure for how memberships, pricing, and purchasing could work together in a digital context.

While STC has since evolved both its visual identity and checkout interactions, many of the principles explored during this project - around pricing transparency, choice architecture, and self-service purchasing - continue to be reflected in the experience today.

Reflection

Looking back, the most interesting part of the project wasn't designing a checkout flow. It was understanding how a service that relied heavily on in-person conversations could be translated into a digital experience that people could navigate on their own.

The work reinforced something I've seen in many projects since: when people feel confident that they understand their options, making a decision becomes much easier.

More than a membership flow

This work was possible because of a close collaboration with STC built over several years.

Together with stakeholders across product, business, customer experience, and technology, we explored how digital services could better support both member needs and business goals. The work moved across many parts of STC’s digital ecosystem — from training programmes and online training to onboarding, website and app improvements, and future service concepts.

The result was more than a set of individual features. It helped STC build a stronger digital foundation and make more informed decisions about how the member experience could evolve over time.

“Hannah's curiosity, commitment, and professionalism made her a highly appreciated collaboration partner.”

Mika Omilian
Former CX Managager STC