OTT platforms have had extraordinarily rapid expansion over the past few years. An online streaming media service, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, is referred to as an over-the-top (OTT) media service. As a result of the pandemic’s repeated lockdowns, which made people stay indoors, their growth was hastened. According to Allied Market Research, the global OTT market is anticipated to generate $1.039 trillion in sales by 2027. The same analysis predicts that the Asia Pacific area would experience the most growth.
More businesses will develop streaming platforms in the future rather than licencing their content to other platforms due to ongoing experiments to bring 5G technology in the region and shifting customer expectations. Existing platforms have put a lot of money into adding new material to their platforms even during the pandemic to keep people interested.
But in an era of escalating competition and more affordable subscriptions, would that be sufficient to keep users interested? To ensure that your OTT platform remains at the forefront of users’ minds, it is crucial to concentrate on user interaction in addition to content.
This article offers strong advice for enhancing the user experience on an OTT platform in order to increase engagement and eliminate the choice paralysis that might cost you disinterested customers.
1. Make an Omni-channel User Experience
Subscribers now watch material on several displays. Users can watch their favourite shows on several screens and share the same streaming service. Your platform must therefore support a variety of user profiles and be compatible with a wide range of devices. A seamless user experience must be maintained at all touchpoints while personalising the entire user journey using data from various devices. Here are some ideas for giving users of your OTT platform an omni-channel experience:
Simple Viewing Experience and Intuitive User Interface
It was simple to watch TV. All one needed to do to begin watching was to press a button. However, OTT requires an onboarding experience for new users in order for them to fully utilise the app. To ensure that people continue to pay for their subscriptions, this experience must be simple.
When it comes to onboarding, Netflix is in the forefront. When you first access the landing page, a short sentence outlining the advantages will greet you:
“View everywhere. Anytime, cancel.
To get you started, the following tab merely requests your email address.
Additionally, Netflix offers new subscribers a risk-free one-month trial period to try out the service. In order to immediately begin providing you with relevant content, the following step requests your email, password, and payment information.
Ability To Work With Multiple Screens
In order to create a tailored experience, effective device management is essential. You can improve the user experience by offering users more flexibility over what they want to view and how they want to watch it by letting them select from a variety of devices, renewal options, and streaming quality.
Different Profiles on the Same Account
If you and your sibling ever got into a battle over the remote control, now is the moment to let harmony reign by activating multiple profiles on a single account. Examples of OTT media apps that support numerous user profiles and devices per account include Netflix and Disney+. Each user can therefore access customised material on a variety of connected devices.
2. Selective Recommendations
Personalization is the process of modifying content for your consumers based on their explicit or hidden inputs.
Imagine coming home from a long day at work and wanting to watch something enjoyable before going to bed. However, you are unsure of what you want to watch, so you spend the next forty minutes looking for something interesting. OTT services like Netflix and Amazon Prime make it simpler for customers to find content they’re likely to like by offering personalised recommendations.
These recommendations are created from user data using intricate machine learning algorithms that are directly informed by user input. Overall, it enhances content visibility and helps to create a tailored streaming experience.
The majority of platforms use a knowledge-based algorithm that recommends material based on a certain attribute, like ratings. Based on user preferences noted on social media, a content-based method is more widely used. A hybrid system that uses two or more combinations to provide more pertinent ideas might even be superior. Modern recommendation systems take things a step further by employing machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide recommendations.
Modern recommendation systems, like Argoid, examine a library by its thumbnail or artwork, closed captions, and even movie trailers, as opposed to traditional systems that depended on characteristics like queries, keywords, and ratings to propose content. Natural language processing advancements offer thorough text analysis and enhanced context interpretation to increase accuracy. Additionally, through improved data processing, Deep Learning and Neural Networks are essential to improving score and candidate generation. These recommendation systems are accessible through APIs, such as Argoid, to make platform integration and personalization simple and automatic.
3.Flexible Subscription Models
The demands of subscribers go beyond only individualised content. Additionally, they desire more control, emphasising the significance of adaptable subscription models that grant customers discretion.
A subscription model guarantees recurrent and predictable revenue from a business perspective. However, subscription plans must accommodate a wide range of users’ needs. Your membership packages, which might range from free trials to monthly and yearly subscriptions, will rely on your user base. A freemium business model with unfettered access to standard material and extra charges for premium content may also be taken into account by new platforms.
