The story of media and entertainment welcomes its next chapter with the introduction of a new hero, the over-the-top service. An over-the-top (OTT) service delivers film and TV content over the internet without the need for traditional cable, broadcast, and or satellite TV services. According to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook .With people staying at home, over-the-top (OTT) video has seen global revenue surge by 26.0% in 2020. And it will keep rising strongly in the coming years, almost doubling in size from US$46.4bn in 2019 to US$86.8bn in 2024. The media world is recognizing the potential of OTT. Many companies are launching their own streaming service, however, as the industry matures, not every service will survive.
What will determine if a streaming service will prosper in the hyper-competitive marketplace? Traditionally, entertainment and media companies have been creating differentiation through content and distribution. The OTT market leverages its content offering through original content, ownership of content rights, and exclusive licensing deals. In terms of distribution, companies are aiming to differentiate by getting closer to consumers through vertical integration and consolidation. In this crowded marketplace strategizing based on these two factors is not enough to sustain customer acquisition and retention. OTT companies must focus on delivering amazing user experiences.
So if we consider the question “what will determine if a streaming service will prosper in the hyper-competitive environment?”, the answer is the quality of the service’s user experience aka the UI and UX.
Below are a few UI/UX considerations that are important for OTT success.
Ease of Use
Even if the service has amazing content, it will be difficult to retain users if users find it difficult to navigate the app.
Seamless and Simplified Onboarding Experience: To watch TV all you have to do is turn on the TV; however, to watch content on an OTT service, users have to go through an onboarding process. The onboarding process should be fast and easy to convince users to continue to make the effort to use the service. The best strategy is to keep everything straightforward. For example, the service should only ask for essential personal information. In addition, when designing the onboarding experience it is important to keep in mind the different types of prospective users. While it is a great idea to provide a tutorial in the onboarding section to educate users about the app and its features, tech-savvy users may not want to “waste time” going through a tutorial; services should make the tutorials optional by including an option to skip. Other considerations to reduce friction in the onboarding process include letting the user know how long the process will take, removing the barrier of asking for a credit card upfront, using social login and avoiding manual entry.
Clear Categorization: With the abundance of content available on OTT platforms, it is vital to have a clear categorization of content types to help make the experience of discovering and viewing content smooth and accessible. Categories can include: shows, movies, live content, on-demand content, trending, genre, language, etc. Moreover, the design of the mechanism through which they can access these categories must be clear and easy. What will this part of the user interface look like? Will there be a search bar at the top or a navigation bar on the bottom with/without filters and/or icons? In other words, how will the user flow be designed for a user who wants to watch an action movie in Spanish available on demand.
Enable Quick, Undemanding Use: Recent trends and observations show that when it comes to watching content, users are doing so in shorter intervals and at random times. In addition, people are always on the move and distributing their attention to a million things at once. This requires that the navigation, discovery, and consumption of the the app be rapidly available to the user while requiring minimal effort. This is achieved mainly through the design of the app. Services must provide vibrant interfaces, responsive layouts, and highly-functioning features. For example, the reading experience should be clean, the navigation menu should be uncomplicated, and the search bar should be easy to identify.
Personalization
A great way to attract and retain users is to provide them with a curated experience.
Personalized Interfaces Through Multiple User Profiles: OTT services should allow users to set multiple user profiles with the same account. This way, each user’s experience will be based on their individual interests, viewing and searching behavior, and content preferences. For example, individual profiles can save data to allow users to continue a show from where they left off or maintain a list of favorite or to-watch content. In addition, the use of multiple user profiles will allow users to customize their interface, for instance, by allowing users to select the placement of content blocks or something as simple as the color of the screen background. One size does not fit all and multiple user profiles fix this problem.
AI/ML-Driven Hyper-Personalization: There is so much content out there that users struggle to decide what to watch next. As a remedy, OTT services introduced a recommendation system that provides personalized recommendations based on different factors of the user’s viewing behavior. Welcome to the hyper-personalized user experience. This strategy has proven to be highly successful as data has shown that Netflix users watch more than 80 percent of the TV shows recommended by the platform. Nowadays, services are taking hyper-personalization to new levels by utilizing the technology of Al and machine learning. Granted many OTT services are already using this technology, however, a great differentiating factor in this hyper-competitive environment will be how they innovatively implement Al and machine learning to create a hyper-personalized experience beyond the usual scrolling library interface.
Correct Use of Push Notifications: Push notifications are a great tool to deliver a great user experience and increase user engagement, however, if implemented incorrectly, it can be detrimental to the success of the app. According to an Appiterate Survey, “71% of all app uninstalls are triggered by a push notification.” Here are some of the ways OTT apps can implement the use of push notifications the right way.
- Use of tone – create a brand voice
- Making sure the notification is relevant to the user
- Adding an element of personalization
- Sending actionable notifications to encourage engagement
- Spacing out the timing of notifications aka do not send too many notifications in a short period of time
- Providing custom notification settings – users can select the type of notifications they want to receive or a certain time to receive the notification
Here is a great article that provides 35 tips for creating better push notification messages.
Design for Multiple User Journeys
To enhance the user experience, OTT services must pay attention to the multiple user journeys aka the different ways a user interacts with a product to reach a goal.
Adaptive Design for Multiple Devices: These days, users are blessed with the privilege to own multiple devices on which they can watch OTT content. Therefore, it is imperative that OTT services design for a multiple device viewing experience. For example, the developer of the app should ensure that the right video aspect ratio is applied for each screen. Furthermore, OTT services have to keep in mind that each device requires different functions. An app on a tablet and phone device will benefit with the option to cast to a larger screen and ability to download the content to watch offline. Good UI/UX design will depend on the service’s understanding of each platform and the contexts of use.
Consistent Design Among Multiple Devices: It is important that the user’s experience with each device is consistent. Users may switch between different devices depending on their circumstance – using their phone while they’re commuting, using a desktop when they’re at their desk, or using a TV when they are cozying up on the couch. They should be able to go from one device to another without having to learn a new way of navigating the app; the steps they take to favorite a show on a phone should be as similar as possible to how you would favorite a show on the TV. Good UI/UX design will ensure that functionality and design across all devices is unified.
Design for Multimodal Interaction: When designing OTT apps, services should keep in mind that multimodal interactions are no longer a future technological scenario, but a present reality. Multimodal interaction provides the user with multiple modes of interacting with a system. It includes haptic, audio, and visual inputs. What would the UI/UX look like for a user that decides to search for content using their voice or maybe using a hand gesture to rewind/fast-forward content? The implementation of multimodal interaction requires carefully crafted user journeys and user flows to plan for all the different scenarios.
Intuitive Viewing Experience
Like any other part of the app, the viewing experience should be designed to increase convenience and reduce friction. Some key features to consider include:
- Identifiable buttons to start, stop, rewind, and fast-forward
- Ability to view subtitles and in different languages
- Flexibility to switch subtitles on-and-off
- Resume content from where the user left off
- Chapter markers
- Picture in picture
- Sleep timer
- Content information: summary, names of actors in the scene, etc
- Live clipping for social sharing
The key here is to focus on creating an amazing user experience; give users a reason to come back for more. Those companies that place importance on the UI/UX of their service are the ones who are going to sustain growth in a crowded marketplace. Pay attention to the importance of UI/UX design, because it is not only a driving factor of success for OTT platforms, but will also become the driving factor of success for other industries too.