Unlocking the revenue potential of Netflix Bundles

Bundles were Netflix's fastest-growing acquisition channel, but something wasn't adding up

Netflix partners with ISPs and telecom providers around the world (Comcast, T-Mobile, Movistar, and others) to bundle Netflix into their service packages. For customers, bundles solved three major barriers to enjoying Netflix: access to the service, awareness that it was part of their plan, and payment, since billing was handled through the partner.

Millions of customers activated Netflix through these bundles, making them a massive growth lever. But while acquisition numbers looked strong, there was a problem in the data: the plan mix was off.

Netflix offered three plans: Basic (SD, 1 stream), Standard (HD, 2 streams), and Premium (4K, 4 streams). In most direct-to-consumer markets, the plan mix was healthy, with a significant share of customers on Standard and Premium. Bundle members, however, were overwhelmingly stuck on Basic, the plan included free with their bundle. Almost none were upgrading.

The bundle entry point. Customers landed here and were fast-tracked into Basic with no plan context.

First designer dedicated to the bundle experience

I was the first designer assigned full-time to the Netflix bundle user experience, a product area that had been operating without dedicated design leadership. I worked across a cross-functional team that included product management, engineering, data science, business development, a UX researcher, a visual designer, and a content designer.

I defined the user experience strategy, shaped the product roadmap alongside PM, led individual design projects from concept through A/B testing, and advocated for the customer perspective in a space where business revenue goals tended to dominate the conversation.

Starting by asking why

Before jumping into solutions, I studied the existing bundle user research and data. The goals: synthesize and socialize what we already knew, identify the right questions for future research, and start defining a user experience strategy.

Mapping the journey

I audited the full bundle user journey to understand where the experience broke down and where intervention would have the most impact.

The activation step was where the plan decision should have happened, but for bundle members it was entirely absent. They confirmed their email, set a password, and went straight to watching. No plan information. No choice. The business framed this as a "plan mix gap." From the customer's perspective, the questions were more basic:

This reframing mattered. The business saw a revenue optimization problem. I saw an informed-choice problem, and that distinction shaped the design decisions that followed.

From "close the plan mix gap" to "help members get the best experience"

The business problem was clear: How do we close the plan mix gap? I advocated for reframing it as a customer problem: How do we help bundle members get the best Netflix experience? Framing it around customer benefit (HD quality, multiple screens for the household, 4K on their new TV) rather than revenue extraction changed the types of solutions we'd explore and the principles we'd design by.

It was also a retention play. Customers on a single Basic stream couldn't watch on multiple devices, which meant lower household engagement and higher churn risk. Improving plan mix served long-term retention as much as short-term revenue.

Three bets, one qualitative study

From the research synthesis, I developed several hypotheses about why bundle members weren't upgrading and what interventions might help. We narrowed these into three design directions, arranged along a spectrum of complexity, to test in a qualitative study:

I also took the opportunity to improve the visual design of the activation flow, which had legibility issues on TV and was overloaded with text. Here's what each concept looked like on TV:

Concept 1: Drop-in upsell

A simple upsell prompt surfaced after activation: "There's a better plan for you."

Concept 2: Plan comparison during activation

Landing

Create account

Choose plan

Concept 3: Personalized plan recommendation

Welcome

Genre preferences

Device selection

Household size

The pre-selection debate

The design team felt strongly about this, but we needed a case that resonated with stakeholders who thought primarily in revenue terms. Two arguments landed:

The trust argument: Pre-selecting higher plans might juice short-term revenue, but it would erode customer trust over time. If we wanted long-term retention, customers needed to feel they'd made a real choice.

The partner argument: If customers saw an unexpected charge on their bill and called the partner's customer service, it would increase the partner's support costs and damage Netflix's relationship with the partner. The bundles business depended on these partnerships.

Both arguments landed. We aligned around opt-in as a design principle, and it held through the rest of the project.

Basic selected: $0/month extra

Standard selected: $3/month extra

Premium selected: $6/month extra

Testing in Munich and Palm Springs

We conducted a qualitative study with 8 participants in Munich and 8 in Palm Springs, two markets with very different bundle landscapes, to validate our hypotheses and test the three design directions.

The results were clear: nearly all participants preferred the plan comparison approach. It allowed customers to compare options and make an informed decision, and it concisely explained the benefits of each plan without overwhelming them. The personalized recommendation was interesting but felt like too much friction before they could start watching. The drop-in upsell felt like an afterthought.

A plan selection step in the bundle activation flow

Based on the qualitative findings, we designed a plan comparison screen inserted as step 2 of the 3-step bundle activation flow: Confirm email → Choose plan → Start watching.

The TV activation flow

Landing

Create account

Choose plan

Start watching

The design was deliberately simple. All three plans appeared side-by-side with their key benefits (picture quality and number of simultaneous streams) and the additional monthly cost above what the bundle included. The included plan was clearly marked, and no plan was pre-selected. The customer had to actively choose.

What I took away from this work

This project reinforced something I keep coming back to: the way you frame the problem determines the quality of the solution. If we'd stayed in the "close the plan mix gap" framing, we would have likely shipped a dark pattern, a pre-selected premium plan designed to extract revenue. Reframing it as an informed-choice problem led us to a solution that was better for customers, better for partner relationships, and better for revenue.

I also learned how much it matters to build persuasive cases in the language your stakeholders speak. The design team knew opt-in was the right principle. But "it's the right thing to do" doesn't move a business development team. "It protects partner relationships and long-term retention" does.

Being the first dedicated designer on a product area taught me how much of design leadership happens before you ever open a design tool: defining a strategy, building shared understanding of the user journey, and creating the conditions for good design decisions down the line.