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As the OTT market becomes more crowded, consumer willingness to pay for multiple video platforms is reaching its limit. Accedo’s own research* shows that the majority (56%) of global users subscribe to less than two paid video services. Only 6% are using five or more. To ensure that your service is the top choice in this increasingly competitive landscape, a deep understanding of market trends and proactive strategies is essential.
While content continues to be a key driver behind video service success, it can no longer be relied upon as the sole differentiating factor. A seamless and enjoyable user experience is crucial for fostering loyalty and encompasses everything from intuitive navigation, fast load times and minimal buffering to personalized content curation and recommendations to responsive customer support.
At the same time, striking the right balance between differentiation and user familiarity is crucial. While innovative UX features can set a service apart from competitors, they should not disrupt the core experience that users have come to expect. Enhancements must be intuitive and add value, rather than complicate the user journey. This balance ensures that the service remains user-centric while offering unique elements that enhance the overall experience and keep the user highly engaged.
In an era where consumer preferences shift rapidly, simply keeping up with the competition or relying on a superficial understanding of user experience is not enough. Rather success hinges on the willingness to properly delve into the intricate details of audience behaviors and preferences as well as the ability to translate insights into action. This depth of understanding is only achievable with solutions that not only collect but also analyze user data effectively in order to reveal insights into viewing habits, content preferences, demographic trends, and engagement patterns. Armed with this knowledge, video service providers can dynamically tailor their offerings, delivering personalized experiences that resonate with specific audience segments.
Yet, despite having extensive user interaction data, many organizations find it challenging to extract valuable insights that can lead to real improvements in their services. The disconnect between data collection and actionable insights often stems from a lack of analytical skills or inadequate data interpretation strategies. Simply investing in advanced analytics and monitoring tools is not sufficient; companies must also foster a data-driven culture where understanding and utilizing user data is fundamental to driving UX excellence.
In order to transition from merely collecting data to a ‘data-first culture’, companies need to embed data analysis at the core of their decision-making processes. This shift begins with investing in advanced analytics tools and technologies that can process and interpret large volumes of data. However, the true transformation occurs when you are successful in cultivating a culture that values data-driven insights. This involves training staff across all departments to understand and leverage data, ensuring that teams collaborate closely to share insights and align on strategic goals. By integrating data analytics into regular business reviews and making data accessibility a priority, you can ensure that insights are not just generated but actively used to inform decisions and drive continuous optimization.
Optimizing a video service’s UX is not solely about leveraging data expertise. Instead, it involves a commitment to running user experience experiments and leveraging the insights gained to shape the service's portfolio and UX development. By adopting this experimental mindset, video streaming services can implement small-scale optimizations and data-driven changes. This phased approach allows them to test success within a limited scope and use the insights gathered to refine strategies before a full-scale rollout.
At the same time, some organizations are cautious to adopt a truly experimental mindset due to the fear of potential negative impacts on the user experience during the testing phase. Experimentation also demands time, effort, skill sets and financial investment, which can strain already tight budgets and schedules. While most would probably agree that there are benefits to taking an experimental approach, the reality is that it can be challenging for video service providers to implement it.
Implementing agile experimentation techniques can help video organizations adapt quickly to new insights and iteratively improve their services. This approach emphasizes short testing cycles, frequent reassessment, and flexibility, enabling more efficient experimentation and quicker adjustments. In addition, investing in robust analytics and monitoring tools is essential for streamlining the experimentation process. These platforms can help in collecting data as well as to proactively identify UX-related issues and opportunities for optimization.
This also extends to service performance problems and how these can negatively affect the user experience. Buffering, freezing, and subpar video quality are frequent issues that naturally frustrate users, typically caused by internet connectivity problems, server capacity limitations, or software bugs within the streaming platform itself. To ensure a consistently high-quality service, it is essential to use monitoring tools effectively to not just implement data-driven UX experiments but also to optimize the service’s performance. It perhaps goes without saying but while UX experiments are incredibly valuable, they cannot compensate for a poor-quality viewing experience.
The emergence of Generative AI has certainly opened up a whole plethora of opportunities for evolving the user experience. For example, AI algorithms can analyze user behavior, viewing history, preferences, and even time of day to suggest content that aligns with individual tastes. This includes recommending similar shows, genres, or even niche content that users might not discover on their own. Similarly, the technology can be leveraged to enhance a service’s search functionality by understanding natural language queries, predicting what the user is looking for, and providing accurate and relevant results. All these factors add up to an experience that is perceived as more relevant and intuitive for the individual user.
In addition, AI is increasingly being used to enhance the viewing experience in different ways, such as for example the generation of cover art and promotional videos for selected content to gain attention and increase likelihood of consumption. Or through generating accurate subtitles and even dubbing content into multiple languages in real-time, broadening accessibility and audience reach. By providing tailored accessibility options, such as adjusting subtitles' size and color based on a user's needs or even offering descriptive audio tracks for visually impaired users, it can be leveraged for making your service accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
The current industry climate has forced many video companies to focus their efforts on streamlining operations and lowering TCO. However, these initiatives, while crucial for success, should not dilute the commitment to delivering an exceptional user experience. By entrusting the running and optimization of your streaming service to a capable end-to-end business partner, you can free up internal resources to concentrate on refining and innovating other user-facing elements - including content acquisition and marketing promotions - thereby ensuring that the customer experience remains front and center in all aspects of your offering.
Accedo will be at IBC in Amsterdam on September 13-16. Please come visit us at booth 5.D68 or book a meeting with our team to learn more about how we can help you optimize your lead the way in delivering groundbreaking user experiences.
*In December 2023, Accedo conducted a proprietary research study surveying 2,000 video service users across 16 countries about their experiences and preferences.
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