Why video previews will reduce churn rate, improve user experience and increase monetisation.
Introduction
When considering the UI design of an OTT streaming platform, video should play a huge role. How could it not? However, from 2007 to around 2016 most platforms followed the same poster grid structure to showcase their content, a clever way to showcase a lot of content at once but not very engaging and extremely static for end-users to navigate.
Jump to 2021 and companies are still following the same grid structure however more premium services have started to introduce autoplay video previews into their platforms, this is seen mainly on the web homepages of streaming services when a user hovers over a content thumbnail. Netflix was the first to implement the new aesthetic on the web and other OTT giants followed suit such as Hulu, Prime and Disney.
We will explore the reasons why we have introduced video previews to our web template apps and why we thought it was a great idea to do so.
Faster Choices
One of the main problems that UX researchers are facing at the moment is that end-users have too much choice to make a decision on finding something new to watch. Users are spending too long choosing a film, OTT platforms have an average of 90 seconds before the user gives up and either watches something they have already seen or moves onto something else, whether that’s live TV, social media or in rarer cases these days, a book.
Hick’s Law is a simple idea that says, the more choices you present your users with, the longer it will take them to reach a decision. As you can imagine this is a catch 22 in the OTT industry. Which is why recommendation engines play a vital role for OTT platforms. Read more about that here.
With so much choice out there users need to be given more information about a show, movie or other types of content quicker. Enter Video Previews.
They say a picture says a thousand words if that’s true then a video says ten thousand. From a engagement perspective it’s important to get users to choose a piece of content as soon as possible but equally important is to make sure they will like that piece of content. The short ten second trailer not only keeps users engaged while browsing but it also increases the chance of one, to start watching the content, and two, making sure they like what they are about to see.
Another benefit is, before video previews existed, if a user was interested but not completely sold on a piece of content they had to navigate to the details page of that content for more information. With video trailer previews however, the need to navigate to the details page is cut out of the equation, meaning that users can browse through more content without leaving the homepage.
A high-end Experience
You have to look the part to get into the party. If you are an existing OTT provider or looking to start a OTT business it’s important to follow certain functionalities users are familiar with, if you want to have a successful business it’s important to follow high-end functionalities users are familiar with. Stand out from the crowd.
Video trailer previews have been the biggest change in UX for OTT platforms focussing on entertainment content in the past ten years and companies are not looking back.
To present a video streaming platform without actually showcasing video seems crazy right?
A static experience is a lot less engaging than a moving interactive experience. OTT companies are not the only people to have realized this. Videos had a much higher engagement rate than photos on Facebook and Instagram which is why they both decided to introduce ‘Stories’ and ‘Reels’ into the platform, bringing to focus the importance of showcasing moving images over static imagery.
Our Solution
Our Solution
We saw the importance of offering video previews in our thumbnails and hero images.
We present our video previews in three places
- Hero Image (Banner)
- Homepage (Content Listing)
- Details Page (Catalog Page)
In all three places, users can simply hover over the content and the trailer will start rolling automatically by replacing an image with a video preview. Users can mute/unmute, navigate to details page, favourite and play the content directly from the thumbnail.
Have a look at the new feature below.
Conclusion
Video previews have become more and more popular over the years but are still seen as a high-end feature for OTT platforms. The main reason being, although simple to use and effective for the end-user, they need a team of talented developers to implement them.
At DIAGNAL our team draws on a broad industry experience and networks to create powerful outcomes for our customers. We release features on a periodical basis for all our customers.
To learn more about how DIAGNAL can help your business talk to one of our specialists today
ENLIGHT is DIAGNAL’s application solution for premium OTT service providers looking to publish and monetize content quickly.
ENLIGHT provides a collection of feature rich premium application experiences across a wide range of device platforms. Well tested and deployed with global customers, ENLIGHT apps provide high performance and a high end experience to end-users.
