The way we consume media like TV shows, movies, and even music, has changed drastically over the last several years.

Video rental stores like Blockbuster have gone the way of the dinosaur, and streaming media has risen to take their place. As a matter of fact, an incredible 85% of US households have at least one video streaming service. Furthermore, the streaming industry is expected to be worth $330 billion by 2030. With the growing popularity of Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming media services, it’s no surprise the streaming app market is highly competitive. But with so much competition, how do you make your streaming service stand out?

Start with the right features.

Must Have Streaming App Features

Eye Catching/User-Friendly Interface Design

Creating a unique interface design works in your favor because it will help grab your users’ attention. Furthermore, it helps your streaming app stand out in a somewhat crowded and established market.

But more than simply creating a unique design, your interface needs to be user-friendly as well. In today’s saturated streaming media app market, users don’t want to spend time learning an overly complicated interface. Users want easy access to their favorite content. Making them navigate through confusing buttons, tabs, and screens will only drive them to your competitors.

Original Content

When you think about the big streaming apps, like Netflix, Amazon, and Disney+, what is it about them that keeps bringing viewers back?

The short answer is: original content.

In fact, according to Cloudwards, 32% of streaming app users say they would subscribe to a new service for original shows or movies produced by the streaming service. That means quality content, coupled with strong marketing and promotion will bring in a significant number of new subscribers.

Global Content

With access to a huge variety of media, global content is gaining popularity among streaming app users. This sort of media is an easy way for people to explore new cultures and languages, and experience people, traditions, and points of view from around the world.

That means including TV shows and movies from a wide library of global genres can be a powerful draw for viewers.

Customization Options

In today’s world of personalization and customization, giving your users more control over the platform is a must.

Some of the most popular customization options user look for include:

• General account settings, like privacy, ad options, theme, layout, etc;
• Playback speed;
• Control over language dubbing and subtitles;
• Changing resolution;
• Personalized playlists;
• Smart recommendations.

Recommendation Algorithm

Did you know that 80% of Netflix viewer activity is driven by the streaming service’s recommendation engine? That translates into real world savings for the media giant. In fact, it’s estimated that the Netflix Recommendation Engine (NRE) saves the company over $1 billion every year.

Netflix uses user viewing behavior to make these recommendations, which means it engages with users in a personalized way. Therefore, adding one to your own streaming app should be a no brainer, and could be a game changer for your budding service.

Parental Controls

Chances are a significant portion of your actual viewers will be children. And unless your aim is to create a streaming app specifically for children’s content, you’re likely to have media that is not appropriate for all ages. For this reason, parental controls are a must. With this basic feature, parents can control the content their children see.

Social Media Shareability

With social media now one of the principal ways people interact with one another online, your streaming app should offer some sort of shareable content. Even if all that is being shared is that users are watching a certain TV show or movie, it will still help generate buzz; for both your platform and the actual content. That makes social media shareability an excellent way to reach new audiences.

Offline Mode/Local Storage

One feature that allows your users more flexibility is an offline mode. With streaming media, success is often dependent on network access and quality. But when people are traveling, or know they will be in an area without a good network, they may still want to access your content.

Therefore, it’s a good idea to give your users the ability to store videos locally on their device. That way the user can download their favorite media and watch it whenever they want, regardless of network access or quality.

Security/Privacy

Now, access to content of all kinds is easy and nearly unlimited. But hand-in-hand with this incredible level of access is a heightened threat of external security breaches.

To safeguard your users’ privacy and data, you’ll need to invest in high-level security measures. This begins with your server of choice. You’ll want one that is safe, stable, and scalable. Additionally, you’ll want to ensure you have strong encryption standards, certificates, and security protocols. All of this is of critical importance to secure your users’ data against unforeseen cyber attacks or data breaches.

Systematic Updates

To offer the very best user experience, you can’t simply build your streaming app and then sit back and relax. Instead, you’ve got to keep up with trends and adjust your app to user and technology changes.

One way to achieve this is to keep a keen eye on your competition. What are they offering that you don’t? Is there something you can offer that they can’t?

You might also consider directly asking your users for their opinions, ask for beta testers of new features, create user-friendly forms for suggestions, and keep an eye on users’ viewing behavior.

Wrapping Up

When it comes to building a streaming app, offering the right mix of features is a must. It’s features like these that ensure your service looks professional, is user-oriented, and proves that you care about the user experience. In the end, there is no rule guaranteeing success in the highly competitive OTT and streaming media market. The only guiding principle is to make your platform as user-centric as possible. That means you need to make sure your strategy aligns strongly with your audience’s demands and expectations.

Keep Reading:

• • • 3 OTT App Monetization Strategies to Grow Revenue and Retain viewers
    • Why is OTT Authentication Important for Security and Conversion?
    • What Is SVOD: A Guide To Subscription Video On Demand

A Design and Discovery session adheres to a design thinking framework and helps businesses: 

• Determine the purpose of the mobile product and how it aligns with business goals;
• Define business outcomes;
• Identify market viability through competitive research; 
• Create user personas rooted in extensive user research;
• Communicate and justify a product’s concept with user journeys, wireframes, and mockups;
• Create and prioritize a scalable product roadmap;
• Enter the market quickly with the most impactful and useful features. 

Typically, Design and Discovery sessions fully define the scope of a brand new mobile app; however, practicing design thinking also carries many benefits for reimagining, rebuilding, and expanding existing mobile apps. In some cases (and for many reasons), mobile apps don’t always perform as expected and businesses need to revisit mobile strategies to effectively reach product goals. In these cases, Design and Discovery helps businesses: 

• Reorganize existing mobile product strategies to better align with business goals;
• Outline a clear vision of how the product will scale;
• Develop an app analytics strategy;
• Validate market opportunities;
• Realign product features with user needs based on research rather than assumptions;
• Further define a user retention strategy and opportunities for long-term growth.

A Design and Discovery session works through four high-priority areas of product management: product strategy, product definition, visualization, and presentation. This article will expand on each of these areas, as well as the steps within each stage.

Design and Discovery

1. Product Strategy 

The first phase of a Design and Discovery workshop involves fully understanding the requirements and expectations of the mobile product. This helps to properly define a product strategy. This phase aligns with the Empathize and Define stages in the design thinking framework. 

By using strategic empathy, product teams can adopt a similar perspective to the customer or end-user of the product. Empathy also helps product teams think more broadly about personal assumptions and recognize that users have individual needs and expectations. Adopting the perspective of the end-user allows product teams to extrapolate customer needs more accurately. 

The steps involved in the Product Strategy phase culminate to define: 

1. The purpose and goal of the mobile product;
2. The business case the product serves;
3. Challenges the product intends to solve;
4. The target audience’s needs.

Furthermore, it produces the following deliverables: 

1. A project timeline;
2. Documented product requirements;
3. A product vision statement;
4. User personas;
5. A list of marketable features.

Creating a Product Vision Statement 

A product vision statement creates a definite sense of direction towards the end goal of the application. What’s more, a vision statement defines the solution to the problem end-users are facing. A concentrated product vision statement: 

1. Explicitly defines who will be using the product;
2. Expresses the solution to the problem those users are facing;
3. Differentiates the product from what currently exists in the market. 

A product vision statement establishes a concrete area of focus for the mobile product. Consequently, this helps businesses set specific success criteria and clear objectives to determine what features the product needs to be successful. This process of defining a product vision statement allows all of the project stakeholders to visualize the product in context, rather than as a catalog of features and design efforts. 

Creating User Personas 

User personas shape the foundation of user experience (UX) design. The practice of UX design hinges on the idea that frequently used and well-liked mobile apps are designed for people using empathy and known patterns of human-machine interaction. 

A user persona is a tool that transforms data into a realistic character with wants, needs, motivations, and frustrations. That means that user personas help product teams understand and empathize with people who will use the product. They can then create a solution that fits the context of the user’s goals.

Identifying Marketable Features 

It’s essential to identify what features will make the product both usable and useful. This means that choosing the most impactful features for a mobile app is a planning process that requires product teams to fully define the product vision, objectives, and success criteria. The best features for your mobile app will become apparent naturally as the team thoroughly maps out how to achieve both business and product goals. 

2. Product Definition

The Product Definition phase of Design and Discovery directly relates to the Ideation stage of design thinking. Accordingly, during this phase product teams generate, capture, and prioritize the core features of a minimum viable product (MVP). Moreover, for existing apps this phase revisits features to ensure they’re properly aligned with user needs. 

The process begins by creating a master list of all the features to include in the product. Next, using this list, product teams start organizing and cutting features to keep the product useful, lean, and user-friendly. A common tactic for selecting essential product features is a prioritization matrix, which is included in our downloadable MVP template.

This method helps determine which features are mandatory, which features will come later, and which features to eliminate entirely. Remember, it’s not feasible to implement every feature in the first version of your mobile app. Therefore it’s essential to eliminate any features from existing products that are not supporting the product’s success criteria. 

The steps involved in the Product Definition help product teams: 

1. Ask the right questions and innovate;
2. Create quantity and variety in product features;
3. Identify feature solutions that are not immediately apparent;
4. Combine multiple perspectives, strengths, and experiences in a team setting.

They also produce the following deliverables: 

1. A prioritized list of product features;
2. User journeys.

Prioritizing Mobile App Features

While companies typically have a long wish list of features to include in a mobile product, it’s critical to limit the number and focus on only what’s necessary to achieve the product’s success criteria. As a means of identifying product features, it’s important to focus on the following questions: 

1. What is the number one problem users are experiencing? 
2. How will the functionality of the product solve that problem? 

Creating User Journeys

User journeys are another core element of UX design. A user journey is a series of actions a user performs to achieve a particular goal within the mobile product. Therefore user journeys are how a product will provide user value by creating an intuitive direction towards solving a pain point. At the same time, a user journey delivers business value by guiding users to the desired conversion point. 

3. Visualization 

The third stage of Design and Discovery focuses on creating a visual solution that details the product’s UX and user interface (UI) design. 

The steps involved in the Visualization phase define: 

1. The visual representation of the finalized user journeys;
2. Capture user value in the product’s UX and UI design.

Additionally, they produce an important deliverable: 

1. Product wireframes.

The Importance of Wireframes

Once you establish the goal and audience for your mobile product, you need to record the exact actions a user must take to complete the product goal. Not only does Design and Discovery provide you with a prioritized list of product features, the process also provides wireframed maps of how those features come together to create the entire user experience. Thus, wireframes outline step-by-step how a user will move through the app. 

It can be very tempting to skip wireframing and move right into prototyping a mobile product; however, wireframing is a crucial step in the process. Wireframing is another testing step in the build-measure-learn process of mobile app development. A few of the core benefits of wireframing include: 

1. Defining information architecture and content;
2. Reducing rework and revisions;
3. Encouraging client and stakeholder feedback.

What’s the difference between wireframing and prototyping? 

At a high-level, mobile app wireframes are low-fidelity, basic layout, and structural guidelines whereas prototypes are advanced representations with more visual detail and interaction. 

4. Presentation

The Presentation phase of Design and Discovery is the final phase of the workshop when all the deliverables come together to create a clickable app prototype. Prototyping allows enough time to make changes to critical design issues before the product reaches development, and it becomes too late (and too expensive) to make major changes to the UX.

The mobile app prototyping stage helps product teams learn how users interact with the “rough draft” of a product to uncover new solutions or determine whether the existing solution is successful. What is learned from a prototype allows the product team to reframe one or several of the problems identified from the previous Design and Discovery stages. As a result, every stakeholder on the project has a more accurate understanding of the challenges users face when they use the product in the context of their life. 

The Benefits of Design and Discovery 

Beginning mobile app development properly helps establish business outcomes and an overall product vision to maximize your return on investment. A Design and Discovery session gives you time with mobile subject matter experts who can help you understand mobile-first best practices. As a result, you improve your chances of winning investor buy-in.

Using this approach to product management allows product teams to focus on both the utility of the app (is it really solving a problem and adding value?) and the usability (what is the user’s experience with the product?). This provides the foundation necessary to begin developing a product that will truly add value for your users and have a much greater chance of success in the market. Accordingly, a concrete list of benefits includes: 

1. Maximizing return on investment (ROI);
2. Establishing business outcomes and a product vision;
3. Identifying and prioritizing product features;
4. Gaining access to mobile subject matter experts;
5. Understanding mobile-first best practices;
6. Determining app metrics and success criteria;
7. Validating product ideas before investing in development services;
8. Achieving stakeholder and investor buy-in.

Design and Discovery is also notably valuable for managing scope creep, which occurs when a project grows far beyond its original size. If you haven’t properly defined the product, scope creep will likely occur, often deviating from the initial agreement of the product. Changes during product development are likely to happen; however, it’s easy to let scope creep take control of your original vision and strategy. Once you establish product definition, your team must carefully consider changes in the plan if they arise. Design and Discovery ensures that the project remains focused on a goal, saving money and time in the long run.

View Our Case Studies 

• The Dynacare Plus app 
• ParticipACTION
• McMaster University’s JoyPop

However, finding success in the mobile app market is not an easy task. Breaking into the mobile market is an iterative process that requires in-depth research, extensive planning, and unbeatable dedication. Understanding the current mobile landscape is imperative to both enterprises that currently have mobile services, and those looking to break into the market as they move forward in developing a mobile strategy that best suits their business objectives.  

Before committing to mobile app development, it’s important to be familiar with the mobile landscape as a whole. The following is a complete list of 50 mobile app statistics that will provide insight into the market you’re about to enter and guide your mobile app growth strategy. 

Mobile App Usage Statistics

As the number of app downloads, mobile users, and mobile devices worldwide is projected to substantially increase in 2022, it’s clear how integral mobility is to our society.  

1. By 2025, there will be a projected 7.49 billion mobile users worldwide. (Source)
2. In 2021 there were 230 billion global app downloads. (Source)
3. In 2021 app store spend hit $170 billion worldwide, an increase of 30 percent year-over-year. (Source)
4. Globally, the average mobile user spent 4.8 hours on their mobile device in 2021. (Source)
5. Seven of every 10 minutes on mobile was spent on social and photo & video apps in 2021. (Source)
6. Total hours spent watching video streaming apps grew 32% worldwide since pre-pandemic levels.  (Source)
7. Americans spent 27.7 percent more time on mobile than watching live TV each day. (Source)
8. 53.96 of web traffic comes from mobile phones. (Source)
9. 92.5 percent of time spent on a mobile phone is spent using mobile apps while 7.5 percent of mobile time is spent using web browsers (Source)
10. Of total smartphone time spent using apps, 43 percent of time is spent on social and communication apps, 25.4 percent on photo and video apps, 7.7 percent on gaming apps, 3.1 percent on entertainment apps, and 20.8 percent on other categories.. (Source)

Mobile users don’t just find their devices convenient, they are dependent on them. Given the continued increase in dependence on mobile, it’s critical to adapt business models to match key audiences’ behavior. If a large majority of your audience is mobile-first or mobile-only, your business needs to communicate with them based on their preference.  

Mobile Performance

When it comes to mobile, users have exceptionally high standards for functionality and performance. It’s mandatory to adapt digital content to translate seamlessly across varying screen sizes and multiple devices. 

Native apps are fast, responsive, and deliver a generally well-received user experience. These applications have access to inbuilt hardware, as well as support for every interface interaction offered by the respective operating system.  

Nevertheless, enterprises can’t neglect mobile web content. Mobile web applications are ideally suited for content consumption and can be designed to imitate native apps. However, web app usability relies heavily on web browser performance. It’s crucial for your mobile web design to adjust content and determine device resolution to properly accommodate the presentation and delivery of digital media.

Any mobile enterprise app needs to be thoroughly tested. Performance factors like load times, product crashes, and complicated registration fields all add up to poor user experience and can ruin your chances of market success. 

1. App crashes cause 71 percent of uninstalls.  (Source)
2. 67 percent of bugs are reported on iOS devices. (Source)
3. 44 percent of in-app defects are found by the user. (Source)
4. 47 percent of apps need more time for testing. (Source)
5. 58 percent of users are frustrated by interface inconsistencies. (Source)
6. 52 percent of users are frustrated by overall app performance. (Source)
7. 29 percent of users will immediately abandon an app if they don’t find it valuable. (Source)
8. 70 percent of users abandon an app because it takes too long to load. (Source)
9. 43 percent of users are unhappy if they have to wait longer than three seconds for your app to load. (Source)
10. 65 percent of users say a poor mobile experience negatively impacts their opinion of the brand. (Source)

If you haven’t properly tested your product, it’s simply not market-ready. A documented testing process is a critical element of any mobile strategy. 

Mobile Marketing 

Achieving momentum in the mobile app market is difficult for even the most established enterprises. Drafting a thorough mobile marketing plan is the cornerstone for continuous app growth and success for an already existing or new product. The marketing component of your overall development process is ongoing and requires constant maintenance. 

1. 51 percent of users say they discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their smartphones. (Source) 
2. 78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline purchase. (Source)
3. Only 54 percent of marketers say they currently use a mobile app platform to market to their prospects and customers. (Source)
4. In 2021 mobile ad spend hit $295 billion, 23 percent growth year-over year. (Source)
5. Mobile ad spend represented 70 percent of enterprise digital spend in 2021. (Source)
6. In 2022, mobile ad spend is poised to hit $350 billion. (Source)
7. Fifty percent of installers make their decision based on their first impression of an app only.  (Source)
8. An app video in the app store can increase install rates by more than 25 percent. (Source)
9. Mobile ad placements grew 95 percent year-over-year in the United States. (Source)
10. Fifty-nine percent of mobile users report being as comfortable with mobile advertising as they are with other outlets such as TV. (Source)

The mobile app market continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Connected customer experiences are seen as a requirement from businesses and services alike. As a response, organizations need to expand beyond their established tactics, toolkits and channels to reach and acquire their audiences and meet the expectations of mobile app customers. 

Mobile App Statistics by Vertical

Looking at a breakdown of each mobile app vertical provides wildly different insights into how users interact with mobile apps adn can greatly influence your mobile app growth strategy. With each vertical and category, retention rates, session duration, and in-app activity vary. 

Banking and FinTech

1. In 2021 Banking and FinTech app downloads hit a record 5.9 billion downloads. (Source)

Food, Restaurants and QSRs

1. In 2021 sessions in Food and Drink apps reached a record 62 billion. Thats 49 percent more sessions year-over-year.  (Source)

Travel

1. The second half of 2021 showed positive trends for travel on mobile. H2 2021 downloads hit 1.95 billion worldwide, nearing pre-pandemic levels of 2.08 billion in H2 2019. (Source)
2. In July 2021, travel apps reached 40 million downloads in the US, the highest since August 2019. (Source)

Health and Fitness

1. Walking and fitness apps are most popular among older groups, while meditation apps are more likely used among Gen Z. (Source)
2. Meditation apps are becoming a fast-growing subcategory within Health and Fitness apps with the top five downloaded apps seeing 25 percent growth year-over-year. (Source)

Retail

1. Time in shopping apps reached over 100 billion hours spent globally. That is an increase of 18 percent year-over-year. (Source)
2. Combined, social commerce (Instagram, Pinterest) and live shopping are poised to be a $2 trillion market by 2024. (Source) 

Entertainment 

1. Globally time spent in sports apps rebounded 30 percent from 2020 back to 2019’s pre-pandemic levels. (Source)
2. In 2021, time spent in the top 25 live streaming apps outpaced the social market overall year over year by a factor of 9 — YoY growth of 40% compared to all social apps at 5%. (Source)

Keep in mind, every app vertical has its unique set of benchmarks and best practices to follow. What’s realistic is based on a case-to-case basis depending on the purpose of your app and your overall business goals. 

Mobile App Statistics for 2022 and Beyond

1. Mobile bolstered the ad industry in 2020 — growing to $240 billion in mobile ad spend and set to top $290 billion in 2021. (Source)
2. Nearly 92.3 percent smartphone users will be using voice assistants by 2023. (Source)
3. By 2023 it is expected that 2.72 billion people will watch video on their mobile phones. (Source)
4. Cryptocurrency will continue to break records. In Q3 2021, worldwide downloads of the top five cryptocurrency apps reached a total of 46M downloads on iOS and Google Play an increase of 75% year-over-year (Source)
5. Gaming will continue to drive revenue. In 2021, games generated $116 billion in the year – that’s 68 cents of every $1 spent in the app stores across iOS, Google Play and Third-Party Android Stores combined. (Source)
6. An additional $16 billion in gaming consumer spend was added in 2021, bringing the total to $116 billion. (Source)
7. Total hours spent in video streaming apps was up 16 percent on pre-pandemic levels. (Source)
8. In 2022 approximately 135.6 million US users will be using voice assistants. (Source)
9. By 2023, IDC forecasts that worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will nearly double, to around $500 billion. (Source)
10. The global mobile workforce is expected to reach 1.87 billion workers (over 42 percent of the global workforce) by 2022. (Source)

Key Takeaways

Heading into 2022, it’s clear that mobile is the key to success. At this point in the game, with the majority of influential enterprises already having a mobile product on the market, a mobile app growth strategy should focus on improving a current product to deliver more value to customers. With many organizations failing to consider key trends and patterns into strategic app growth plans, leveraging the insights from the mobile app statistics listed above can shed light on trends that can manifest into opportunities. Acting on these newfound opportunities has the potential to lead to greater success, reaching business goals, cutting costs, and getting a leg up on the competition. Remember, to deliver value, businesses need to meet customer expectations.

However, the sudden increase in users on OTT platforms has also increased a number of challenges broadcasters and content distrubtors face when it comes to how viewers view their content. One of the biggest challenges these platforms face is centered around security and conversion. How can broadcasters ensure that their omnichannel experiences are secure enough to ensure that that only those who are paying or subscribing to the platform have access to the content. 

Unfortunately for platforms that only require a simple password login, password sharing and identity theft have long been issues that have cut into the pockets of providers. Today, content distributers need to put their best foot forward to securely authenticate and authorize users to avoid and eliminate any possibility of  any user sneaking into the network that may lead to financial losses or brand reputation tarnishing.

What is OTT Authentication

Authentication refers to the process or action of verifying the identity of a user. Through the use of various authentication methods, content providers can verify that the right viewer  is trying to access their content. As mentioned above this helps to cut down on identity theft and lost revenue. Currently MVPD authentication is the most popular form of authentication with 43% of US broadband households with traditional pay TV are likely to switch to a virtual multichannel video programming distributor (vMVPD) in the next 12 months.

This method helps broadcasters deliver content to viewers who have paid for the service and also allows them to present locally specific content based on user location to ensure the right audience is being offered the right contentensure that his content can only be viewed by authorized people, and the content viewer also wants to ensure that the received content is indeed from the right sender and that it has not been accidentally or maliciously altered 

Benefits of Authetication

Simplified User Experience

No one likes to remember long credentials, especially if they can utilize the true potential of frictionless login across all applications and connected devices. While SSO is on the verge of becoming an industry standard for authentication, OTT platforms need to quickly gear up for enhancing the user experience through SSO and Federated SSO.

OTT users perceive your enterprise as a single entity, and they expect you to treat them like a single customer. If you have multiple websites and mobile apps under the same company umbrella, there’s no reason you can’t meet this expectation.

Each customer has one account. One set of credentials that they can use anywhere they interact with your brand. Since the market is flooded with plenty of OTT platforms and publication websites, the ones offering a seamless experience to the users would surely get more signups and subscriptions.

Restricting Content

With the increasing access to media over OTT platforms, a major challenge for the entertainment industryis setting age restrictions for specific content. While some media platforms aren’t focusing on creating sub-profiles, the competitors are already leveraging access management for a single identity used by multiple users.

Whether we talk about a particular category of content for premium users or setting age restrictions, access management plays a crucial role in enhancing the user experience for every business. Authentication also offers broadcasters the ability to provide exclusive content based on predefined parameters. For example, unauthenticated viewers can download the app and watch basic programming while authenticated users are able to unlock additional content. There is also the ability to offer tiered access based on the user’s subscription level. This allows OTT platforms to gain more signups, increase retention rates, and scale business growth.

User Profiling

Media businesses need to understand that registration fatigue could be why they lose a potential subscriber. Honestly; nobody wants to share a large amount of personal data in a single go, especially during the sign-up process. Keeping the subscription form compact is the best way to ensure a quick sign-up from the users’ end.

Authetication lets you gather important details about a subscriber over time and not everything in a single go. This not only improves user experience but eventually helps to build credibility in the long run. Authentication enables you to gather consumer data through various stages of the consumer’s journey to share their information as they interact with your business.

Final Takeaways

With the increasing number of data breaches and compromised identities worldwide, OTT platforms should consider getting a robust authentication solution in place.

Whether it’s delivering a seamless omnichannel experience across multiple devices or managing billions of identities, authentication has become essential. 

For more on how Clearbridge Mobile can help deliver an authentication solution to your OTT platform, take a look at our in depth case studies for New England Sports Network and Yes Network to see how we revolutionized their live sports streaming OTT apps.

This is the second article in our series exploring the different digital entertainment delivery platforms. We are exploring the entertainment on demand world we live in today, one platform at a time.

We started with a dive in on advertising supported video on demand (AVOD); in case you missed it, and want to catch up, you can find it here. This blog’s focus is on Subscription Video on Demand more commonly known as SVOD. Let’s start with a short history lesson.

The History of SVOD is the History of NETFLIX

SVOD as we know it today was invented when Netflix launched their monthly subscription website in the United States in September 1999. Netflix had started in the late ‘90s as a movie rental service undermining the giant Blockbuster Video with a movie delivery service. Customers of Netflix could order a bundle of movies over the internet to be delivered to their homes where they could be enjoyed on DVD. Famously, there were no late fees. You returned the bundle of titles when you had finished with them, and could then go ahead and order more.

The experience wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t immediate. Blockbuster customers on the other hand, would walk down to their local shop (it’s hard to believe now, but they were everywhere), select a title off the shelf, pay $4.99 for library titles to rent them for 2 nights. Or pay $6.99 to rent the latest release for one night. Should you return them late, you would be charged late fees. These fees could be considerable, and consumers hated them bitterly. In a last-ditch move to save themselves before the very end Blockbuster did away with them, but too late. The late fees were also controversial within the industry, as Blockbuster didn’t pay rights holders of those movies returned late a share of those late fees.

In a typical arrangement with a supplier, Blockbuster would pay a revenue share where the distributor would receive a proportion of rental fees their title earned in exchange for providing the rights to rent the movies to the public for Blockbuster.

Netflix correctly identified that customers would likely rent more movies at once if they knew they wouldn’t face late fees should they fail to consume them all within 24 or 48 hours. They also knew that Blockbuster stores often could not keep up with demand for new release titles from the public. While this unfulfilled demand was great for the movie industry, as customers would nearly always select an alternative movie vs returning home empty handed, it was an ongoing source of frustration for the consumer. Because Netflix didn’t rely on physical stores, they were better positioned to meet demands for the newest releases.

In 1999 Netflix blew the industry wide open when they began offering an all you can eat option to the consumer in exchange for a monthly subscription of $9.99. All you can eat options that existed at the time were limited to the Pay TV networks like HBO in the United States, or TMN (The Movie Network) in Canada. Cable and Satellite TV distributors had begun experimenting with video on demand offerings as a means of enriching the value of a cable or satellite TV subscription. These services were new and had tighter inventor restrictions than we are used to seeing today. The amount of movies available for an all you can eat experience was limited by the broadcast schedule of the pay networks, and by the amount of inventory made available to them by the cable and satellite companies.

Netflix on the other hand, had massive inventories of titles available. Subscribers would order the movies they wanted to see from the website which would send the movies to subscribers homes where they could be viewed on DVD, much like they had done with rental. There were some titles available to be streamed directly over the internet – but the overwhelming majority of their content was disc driven, and ready to go to consumers homes after just a few clicks.

After Blockbuster Video declined an offer to buy-out Netflix in the early 2000s, Netflix doubled down on their efforts to be a lean, mean , entertaining machine. They took advantage of the growing availability of high speed internet services in the U.S. and Canada, and began to focus on putting more and more of their catalogue online available to stream. As the rental component of their business declined, and the subscription side leapt forward, Netflix started to become the streaming giant we know today.

I’ve glazed over a ton of details here… In the mid to late 2000s I was selling film x to buyers domestically and internationally, and I can tell you the impact Netflix had on the marketplace was dramatic. Every single territory they went into they disrupted. Today, they lead the SVOD, and PayTV, markets globally with 205 Million Subscribers globally. Amazon is close behind, at more than 150 Million Subscribers, and Disney’s SVOD service Disney + takes third with more than 90 Million subscribers as of writing.

How the SVOD Market Works

There are a lot of SVOD platforms. Easily more than a few dozen of these platforms exist, and compete globally for subscribers. The platform may have been invented by Netflix, but the total market size is such that no one player will own the globe.

SVOD operators offer a mix of content to an audience in exchange for a fee, paid monthly, weekly, or annually. Hallmarks of an SVOD service are: exclusive content, subscription fees, no advertising, with content delivered to audiences over the internet. Platforms typically look to license content on an exclusive basis, to draw audiences in based on the shows they have available. Typically these shows are paid a license fee in exchange for the rights. Some of these fees have bonuses, or are structured with variable payout systems where content providers are rewarded fees based on the number of views their programs receive. SVOD platforms need deep libraries of content to keep their audiences interested, and exclusive access to premiere premium content to prove the ongoing value of the subscription.

SVOD platforms differentiate themselves from one another by pointing to their exclusive content, and the depth of their content catalogue. They court fans of known content franchises, and hype new shows they have bought away from their competitors to attract audiences. Some mega franchises of the past like FRIENDS, and THE OFFICE have such intense, built-in audiences that we have seen the big players spend serious money to secure the rights to these shows – perhaps better put, they pay big fees to take these built-in audiences away from their competitors.

Subscribers pay monthly fees to the platforms in exchange for the rights to view the available content on an unlimited basis without interruption by advertisement, at a time convenient to them, and in high quality formats with robust technology keeping the viewing sessions uninterrupted by bugs. Speaking of robust technology, SVOD platforms live and die by the user experience. If fans can’t find the shows they’re looking for, or can’t view it in high quality, or can’t finish watching an episode without the app crashing, they will leave the platform in search of an alternative.

Operators court potential subscribers with limited trial experiences – often just one week, though some operators will offer more generous monthly trials. It’s essential the app is easy to navigate, that the available content is easily browsable, that suggestions are relevant to the user’s demonstrated preferences, and that there’s enough to watch to keep them coming back after the trial.

SVOD platforms are a bit different from AVOD or TVOD platforms with respect to which devices they need to be compatible with. A strategy which puts their service on all or a large number of devices will give them lots of opportunities to win new subscribers, but because of the high standards expected by audiences with respect to the user experience, the quality of the video feed, and the uptime of the service; this can be a risky strategy for any but the biggest players.

Lessons learned – avoid these pitfalls if launching your own SVOD platform

Millennial audiences have been conditioned by Netflix to expect premium experiences in exchange for their subscription fees. They expect an advertisement free experience. They expect to be able to easily navigate the mix of content available at minimum by genre. They expect an always-on experience, with all the episodes of a series available to binge in their entirety.

The best of the SVOD services are available on mobile platforms (Apple, and Android) with natively built experiences. Standing out with a premium look and feel will really help manage subscriber retention issues, and take pressure off of customer care. Increasingly, operators are able to take advantage of digital SVOD marketplaces like Amazon Channels, or ROKU Marketplace which aggregate available SVOD services, and promote them on platform to their massive base of users. While these seem like ways to save money versus building your own 10 foot experiences; they can come with significant revenue sharing implications which will need managing.

Don’t over complicate your experience, or your model. Quibi learned this the hard way. Quibi developed an SVOD/AVOD hybrid solution which would offer users an ad-supported experience at a monthly fee of $4.99, and an ad-free experience for $7.99. They tried to push the boundaries by creating content that was only viewable in portrait mode on your mobile device, and all their episodes were shorts. Quibi failed quickly, and hard, despite all the buzz surrounding their launch, and despite the hundreds of Millions of dollars invested in premium content development. While Quibi execs officially laid the blame on COVID-19, that’s tough to swallow considering the substantial growth experience by the SVOD industry as a whole.

Planning on going OTT with your own SVOD platform? Having launched one myself, here are 3 tips:

Invest in premium content that will command an audience

The SVOD landscape is very competitive. Your service is going to be competing with the big boys on the block: Netflix, Amazon, HBO Time Warner, CBS-Paramount-Viacom, ABC-Disney; and the other little fish. Every producer with an idea is looking to these major services for investment in their scripts. You won’t be able to compete with the big boys head-on at launch, you’re going to need to be creative.

This can take the form of aggressively courting producers, spending to advertise co-production opportunities, being prepared to take risks. But it can go another way as well. Some of the most successful SVOD services start with hyper targeted content offerings courting a specific audience, spending to deliver premium formats like 4k, and developing a reputation for excellence in a genre.

Examples of this include:

Love Nature – a service dedicated to wildlife content.

Pureflix – a service dedicated to spiritual programming

Muslim Kids TV – a service dedicated to Muslim children with appropriate, educational content.

Fubo TV – a service dedicated to sports programming, which has since expanded considerably.

MetOnDemand – a service dedicated to broadcasting operas

By providing focussed content offerings to niche communities, these services develop a reputation of excellence within their target audience and don’t need to compete with the majors for content. Distributors with focussed content offerings will take new content to these buyers knowing the shows will get a larger audience more quickly and have a higher likelihood of renewal for subsequent seasons than they would be on mainstream outlets.

Invest in premium user experience

Subscription video on demand is a competitive business. There are a lot of options for today’s consumers, particularly amongst those cable cutters and cable nevers who are stringing together several subscription services to replace the cable experience. This customer is ruthless. If the service doesn’t meet their expectations for ease of use, and 24/7 uptime they will not stick around. Even if you have that ‘just gotta see it’ hit of the year show, once your subscribers have consumed it, they’ll drop you like a hot potato. You need to keep these subscribers on board for as many months as possible to maximize the value of each single subscriber you pay to acquire.

Respect your investments in content, and promotional advertising to win over new subscribers by investing in the best possible user experience you can afford, and continue investing in it. You need to be in this for the long-haul and will need to consistently spend to keep your app stable, and improving with the times. Even if you have to limit yourself to one platform at launch. Do it extremely well.

Avoid the Apple tax

Did you know that Apple earns ___ billion from the app store alone? Apple takes a 30% cut of your app’s revenues for the privilege of distributing your app in their app store to Apple devices globally. Your SVOD business margins are too tight to operate without 30% of your gross revenues. You can’t, and shouldn’t avoid distributing your SVOD app in the App Store, you need to be creative and clever and you can get around the apple tax. If you’re interested in learning more, reach out – we should talk!

Closing thoughts:

Netflix gave birth to SVOD, and the Millennial generation have wholeheartedly embraced it. Cable cutters and cable nevers are flocking to these solutions, are willing to subscribe to more than one service, and are willing to swap between providers month to month. This is a competitive landscape, with hundreds of options for consumers.

If you’re considering taking your entertainment product to the next level, like the NY Met have done with MetOnDemand to access that global marketplace, it can be transformative. There is lots of room for new SVOD services, but you need to be prepared for the competitive landscape ahead, and ready to spend aggressively on technology, content, and advertising.

Globally as access to high speed internet improves, more and more potential viewers are coming online. The market potential for subscription video on demand is global in scale. Many users will look to multiple platforms to enjoy their favourite shows (just like they used to do on TV!)

Transactional Video on Demand, Premium Video on Demand, Subscription Video on Demand, and new AVOD/SVOD hybrid platforms are engaged in a street fight these days for online audiences. Next issue we will dive deeper into these streaming wars as we continue our series.

If you like what you read, please hit that thumbs up button and share this post with a friend.

Not your cup of tea? Did I miss something? Friends in broadcasting, amigos in online video, online Madison avenue MadMen if you think I got it wrong, please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you!

The truth of the matter is that great ideas don’t always translate into great results. For enterprises to drive real business value, they need to continuously analyze their app’s business and technical impact, rethink how they connect with consumers and evolve their apps to meet shifting user needs. Problems arise when enterprises introduce new app features or technology changes without thoroughly vetting them, resulting in poor performance and users not responding as expected.

For enterprises struggling to see the ROI they expect from their mobile application, it’s essential to conduct a mobile app assessment, before deciding to put your app into retirement and exiting the market. Evaluating your app gives you insight into how well your app achieves your business goals and identifies areas of opportunity to set your digital experience apart. These insights can help guide vendors like Clearbridge Mobile, as they help you transform and revamp your app to truly meet your user and business needs.

We designed this mobile app assessment tool to help enterprises achieve the ROI they’ve always envisioned. By assessing your mobile app with this resource, you’ll gain insight into how well your app performs against your business objectives and where you are missing the mark. This mobile app assessment will show you how to evaluate an app based on business impact and technical impact. We’ve highlighted the most essential KPIs needed to assess your mobile app within each category for you to focus on, ensuring you receive the most impactful insights to drive your future mobile strategy. 

   Our mobile app assessment tool includes:

• A detailed breakdown of KPIs to assess your mobile app that includes; user acquisition, user retention, user experience, revenue impact, and technical performance
• A graded scale to help you visualize how well your app is performing
• Individualized recommendations on next steps and areas for improvement based on your score
• Detailed formula breakdowns to help you calculate your ROI metrics, including; user acquisition costs, app churn rate, app referral value, and user lifetime value
• Access to additional resources that will help grow your knowledge of concepts introduced in our recommendations

How to Evaluate an App

To get the most out of this mobile app assessment tool, you’ll need to have a basic understanding of the five key areas this assessment will focus on, and why they are important when evaluating an app. 

User Acquisition

User acquisition refers to the number of users who download and install an app from a particular location and find the app either through organic search, word-of-mouth, or paid campaigns. It is essential to analyze your user acquisition metrics (installs, bounce rate). They provide insight into what marketing efforts bring in the highest number of new users and give direction to where your marketing team should focus their future efforts.

User Retention

On a high-level, user retention focuses on the percentage of users who return to an app based on the date of their first visit. Analyzing your user retention metrics (DAU, MAU, Session length) helps identify if your app indeed provides value to your users. For example, if you’ve noticed that the number of daily active users your app brings in doesn’t meet the goal you set, it might be an indication that it’s time to re-evaluate your users’ needs as they may have changed from when your app first launched. User retention metrics can have a significant influence on keeping your app relevant. 

Revenue Impact

Ultimately app success is dependent on its ability to generate revenue or at least visible ROI. Evaluating your app’s monetization will help you make informed decisions about the future of your app and predict any financial issues that may arise.

Mobile App Performance

The evaluation criteria that fall within this area will help provide insight into significant issues related to how an app performs and operates, for example, if an app crashes every time it’s opened on an iPhone. These metrics are the foundation for optimizing an app because performance issues such as long loading periods and constant app crashes make it extremely difficult to retain users. 

User Experience

Successful mobile apps all have one thing in common: they benefit users.  If a user is going to use an app repeatedly, the product needs to be useful and offer a great deal of value. Evaluating your user experience against industry standards will ensure you are driving home value and ensuring your users’ needs are addressed. 

Are you Ready to Discover Where Your App is Falling Short?

Developing a successful app involves understanding how business strategy, product strategy, mobile app architecture, user experience design, and mobile app marketing all work together to create a seamless end-to-end experience. Clearbridge Mobile has extensive experience with providing enterprise companies with end-end product development from strategy to market launch, and we are ready to help you. If you’re ready to chat about your app’s next evolution or want to dive deeper into what improvement areas you should prioritize, our design thinking workshop is the perfect place to start. To find out more about our design thinking services and how to book a consultation, click here. 

Mobile personalization should go beyond “Welcome [firstname]” messages and include customized content recommendations, offers, push notifications, and announcements. Using the latest technologies in tandem with mobile app analytics and tracking user habits make it easier for brands to keep mobile app users engaged for more extended periods. Marmaris escort

As you and many other enterprise brands are now actively trying to incorporate mobile personalization into mobile strategies to capitalize on today’s digital consumer, there are a few common mistakes that everyone should avoid as they execute these strategies, if they want to see success. 

Three Mobile Personalization Mistakes

Assuming One Technology Will Solve Everything

Unfortunately, there is not a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to mobile personalization. Some enterprises make the mistake of following the latest technology trends, but sometimes that technology isn’t needed to meet your customer’s needs. For example, artificial intelligence has proven to be a great tool in driving mobile personalization efforts and may not deliver the personalization your user needs. 

When adding personalization to your app, keep in mind that you may need more than one vendor to assist with your mobile data, delivery, and content needs, so spend time assessing providers for those that best suit your requirements. Invest in tools that help you understand exactly what your customers want so you can deliver it, one customer, at a time.

Only Having a Basic Understanding of Your User’s Behavior

It is essential to understand what experience your user expects in their moment of need and why they need your solution. For example, you may know that your customer is a 40-year-old professional woman who uses her phone for work, but you also need to know that she spends more time on her cellphone while running errands on the weekends. Having this data can help you make informed decisions on when to send specific messages. In the example above, an enterprise could see this behavior as the perfect opportunity to send content based on geo-location. For this reason, collecting rich data to understand consumer behavior is necessary to personalize your mobile experience.

Not Linking Personalization Objectives to Business Objectives

Before you take a deep dive into personalizing your mobile experience, it is essential you identify your business objectives. Sometimes enterprise apps fail because they haven’t adequately aligned their mobile strategy with their business objectives. Start by determining what business objectives you need to meet and which personalization tactics will help you meet those goals. For example, if your goal is to increase user engagement, you should introduce dynamic messaging, calling users back to the app. You can read more about creating a user-centric push notification strategy here. Once you implement a personalization tactic, you should measure results against your business goals. If you don’t see the results, you had hoped for, recalibrate and try again.

Final Takeaways

Mobile personalization gives the power to your users and offers you the opportunity to listen. The insight you’ll gain from listening is invaluable and will help you tailor your personalization methods to make sure messages are wanted and not intrusive. Keep in mind, however, that personalization should not come at the expense of privacy. Getting users to opt-in is a great starting point, but consumers should have as much control as possible. Different users have varying degrees of comfort and needs. At the very least, consumers should control the type of information or promotions they receive and how often.

For enterprises in the e-commerce, health, fitness, and media and entertainment sectors, COVID-19 has presented a golden opportunity. As more consumers are relying on the digital touchpoints brands they interact with have to offer, many enterprises have seen digital traffic rise tenfold.  

For example, there was a 25 percent rise in eCommerce app installs during the pandemic (Q2 vs. Q1 2020), 7% higher than theQ4 holiday rush. Now that your enterprise has attracted these users, you need to ensure you can convert and retain them as well.

One way to consistently power user engagement, conversions and retention at scale is to integrate app personalization into your enterprise mobile strategy. This post will look at three ways to convert and retain your new app users with personalization.

3 Ways to Convert and Retain Your App Users with Personalization

Use Voice to Personalize the Search Experience

It’s estimated that by the end of 2020, 50% of all search will be via voice tech. Furthermore, A December 2019 survey from Comscore MobiLens Plus found that US smart speaker owners are already using their devices to ask general questions, stream music, and get updates on sports, traffic, and weather, among other things. Your users are talking, so listen. Every voice search query made by a specific user can tell you about their instant wants, needs, and preferences. 

Use this data to instantly populate product or content recommendations based on the partial or full search terms, helping direct your users exactly what they want faster.

Remember, these recommendations continue to get more accurate with each subsequent search action that a user takes, helping you reduce the path from product discovery to purchase.

Leverage the power of predictive recommendations

With an increase in competition and traffic to digital platforms, using transformative technology like AI has presented a unique opportunity for businesses to make smarter and deeper connections with users while driving greater profitability. AI and machine learning-driven apps allow enterprises to leverage the data they collect via online traffic, mobile devices to strategically improve the user experience. Using AI will allow you to find trends and make suggestions to create more meaningful and context-rich opportunities to engage your users. 

Netflix is a prime use case for applying AI in an entertainment/media app, tailoring video content to personal preferences, contexts, and schedules by, for example, re-ordering categories in real-time for individual users. Hence, the most relevant product or content recommendations show up right at the top.

Tailor your app navigation experience to each user

Apart from your users’ search, browsing, click behavior, and consumption history, you can personalize how your users navigate your mobile app. Other parameters such as gender, buyer personas, geolocation, time of day/timezone, seasons/weather, etc. can be harnessed to personalize the banner images, graphics, CTAs, trending products, and offers, etc.

It is also crucial you leverage insights from your users’ most common paths towards conversion to further optimize their navigation journey. The more individualized the navigation journey, the probability of your users finding what they want increases.

Final Takeaways

Your users expect and demand an end-to-end, tailored customer experience, right from the first app launch. For those in the health, fitness, and media and entertainment sectors, that statement holds even greater significance, especially in the post-COVID-19 environment. As we navigate the new normal, it’s essential to reach out for consulting support. Our accredited and vetted mobile experts are available to work with you and answer any of your questions.

With this increase, however, comes scalability challenges for existing software infrastructures that struggle to handle such rapid growth. Often resulting in usability, performance, and technical problems that can potentially harm brand reputations, lead to loss of customers, and further perpetuate loss of revenue. 

Businesses must ensure the quality of their digital platforms and services by continually updating and improving their infrastructure. Unfortunately, however, due to our current circumstances, many businesses are struggling to scale quickly enough and are experiencing significant backlogs in features and necessary improvements. 

For businesses that fit into that description and are looking for a means to effortlessly ramp up their development capacity, receiving necessary technical support, and address development challenges, a remote team extension may be the answer.

In this article, we will discuss the business value behind the extended team model and the advantages that come with using this model.

Fill Your Resource Gap Through Team Extensions

Team extensions are a form of outsourcing that allows businesses to augment their in-house staff with the necessary and required skills on a per-project basis without having to rearrange internal resources, hire more staff, or slow down other initiatives. It is important to remember that the purpose of staff augmentation is not to replace your own, but rather to fill the skill and experience gaps in areas your team may be lacking. 

For businesses already following an agile framework, integration is extremely simple as these extensions are typically self-sufficient and self-organizing scrum teams that work on the whole or part of your project without requiring significant help from others. 

Unlike staffing agencies, members of team extensions are solely managed by existing department management within your company. At Clearbridge Mobile, our team extensions are entirely custom-built to your specific requirements, completely remote, flexible, and adaptable. Our team of vetted engineers work and collaborate alongside your developers as full-time members of your project, rapidly expanding your team, and delivering real business value from the very first sprint.

Building your Internal Business Case for Team Extensions

Data from Rakuten Intelligence indicates that online order volume from full-assortment grocery merchants rose substantially from March 12 through March 15, compared to the same period a year earlier. What happened; however, was widespread unpreparedness for this sharp increase in demand resulted in technology complications from the sheer volume of users trying to access these digital platforms, leaving many without access to the functionality they require.

Ocado, a popular online-only grocer that launched in 2002, has seen the volume of traffic on its website increase almost fourfold since the beginning of March. David Shriver, Ocado’s group head of communications says “It’s the highest peak we’ve ever experienced in the history of the business.” 

At one point Ocado had so many digital orders that it had to stop taking registrations from new customers and take its mobile app out of service completely, forcing customers to wait in a “virtual queue” to access the service. While these actions were entirely necessary to keep Ocado’s digital platforms running as securely as possible, their inability to update their software promptly to meet this demand is also a terrible disservice to user experience and customer satisfaction. 

Ocado is a prime example of a business that would have been able to address this issue had they invested in the resources necessary to augment their internal staff to help address these technical issues at the right time.

The business benefits to team extensions 

Seamless Integration

Unlike traditional outsourcing models, the extended team model integrates the remote team into your business. The team extension’s work and efforts are aligned to the same values, and guidelines your in-house team has to follow. For business leaders this will result in increased productivity, an ability to make quicker decisions, help your business scale for future growth, and drastically reduce wasted time as the communication between the team members is streamlined by the ability to communicate with each other directly over a shared understanding of a common goal.  

Quicker Time to Market

When you outsource a project to an outsourcing firm, they will be working on several other projects simultaneously and may not be able to give your project the undivided attention it requires, slowing production, increasing delays, and ultimately affecting your time to market. With the extended team model, your project will be prioritized as the assembled team was specifically built to only work with your business, to meet your specific needs. In today’s post-COVID-19 market, delays in any software release can be detrimental. With 100 percent focus on the task at hand, your project receives the attention, effort, and expertise required to meet the demands of your customer quicker.

Greater Transparency

Transparency plays a vital role in helping you maintain healthy team dynamics and proficient workflows. Team extensions enable this to occur due to greater access to information about the project’s development. In the extended team model, teams have unified repositories which enable more frequent iteration cycles. This means there is much more trust in the extended team and much less second-guessing, which sometimes happens in outsourced projects. Ultimately, when transparency is added to the corporate culture, employees will be more engaged and committed to the vision of the company

Access to Subject Matter Expertise

A project or business need requires a specialized skill set, but not necessarily for any further business needs. Staff augmentation provides a way to shop for a specific skill set without requiring a commitment to utilizing that skill set again in the future. Saving your company from an intensive recruitment search and making it possible for you to get the help you need temporarily at a lower cost.

Choosing who to partner with

Companies need to invest in mobile as a part of their push for omnichannel distribution to keep alternative lines of business open for as long as possible. This includes ensuring the quality and performance of the digital platforms customers are accessing. As we navigate the new normal, it’s important to reach out for consulting support. Our accredited and vetted mobile experts are available to work with you and answer any of your questions. 

To survive in today’s app market, enterprises must invest in websites, apps, and services rooted in exceptional user experience. Creating that experience involves practicing design thinking and begins by establishing an extensive understanding of your target users’ lives and unmet needs.

The best way to go about gaining that understanding is simply by conducting user experience research. Unfortunately, for many companies, especially those on a limited development budget, pushing out a working product may be a higher priority than conducting user research. However, that can prove to be a fatal mistake. Not taking the time to do at least some user research to inform your product’s design may have a crippling, detrimental effect on your product’s success.

In this article, we will go over various low-cost, simple user experience research methods and discuss ways to use this research to improve the user experience for a successful customer-centered mobile app.

Why Is UX Research So Important?

A mobile app’s UX influences how users perceive the product. Users search for apps that provide value, are easy to use, and help them fulfill a goal. The UX ultimately determines if a user will return to your app or delete it altogether, possibly giving it a poor review. According to UX Designer Nick Babich, “The best products do two things well: features and details. Features are what draw people to your product. Details are what keep them there.”

The startling truth is that 25 percent of users stop using an app just after one use. Why? Although there are many reasons, the most prominent one is not finding the immediate value in the app. User experience research not only helps UX designers to better  understand the likes and dislikes of their audience but also helps them either validate or invalidate initial product ideas to guide the development of the product. If done correctly, user experience research will reveal different mindsets, motivations, pain points, and behaviors of a targeted user group. These key factors ultimately decide if a product will be successful or not.

Types of Research You Can Conduct 

Numerous methodologies have proven to be effective in producing quality results. Often the methods used are split into two categories: qualitative and quantitative. 

• Qualitative — observational findings, emotions, and human behaviors.
• Quantitative — metrics and actual data.

Each type of data will help you gain insights that will help you throughout the development process. For example, the qualitative data you gather will help identify new opportunities and trends. Quantitative research provides businesses with numerical and statistical information, which can be hugely influential in convincing stakeholders to buy in and invest in a project or concept.

Here are some examples of the data you might collect:

• Qualitative — During the user testing, some participants had to re-read the first paragraph on the landing page before they understood the message.
• Quantitative — The average time spent on the checkout page is 17.3 seconds.

Below are some common user experience research methods:

Usability Testing 

Use this methodology when you have a product or a prototype ready, and you need to test it with users. Before you launch it, it’s good to get constructive feedback from your users/potential users and see if they are stuck somewhere or don’t understand something.

A/B Testing 

Use this research method to analyze what options are most popular amongst your target audience. You can give your users two interfaces to try out, for example, and depending upon their preference; you can choose to move forward with the one they connect with most.

Survey/Questionnaire 

Preliminary surveys and questionnaires are straightforward and provide a critical channel for collecting data from potential users. By answering a set of questions, businesses can learn their target audience values, expectations, pain points, etc. This research method is cost-effective and can return large amounts of data. Furthermore, researchers can even ask why users decided to use a competitor’s app and gain insight into how they found it and what motivated them to continue to use that particular product. 

Behavioral Analysis

Behavioral analysis is essential to understanding user traffic patterns. Often, behavior analysis is conducted alongside a survey to develop a clearer picture of why users are interacting the way they are. It is conducted by installing software on a participant’s device that will track how they navigate an app and how they use it.

Competitive Analysis

This research method is not only easy to conduct but is cost-effective and can provide great insights from a potential user base. For this research method, businesses need to identify their competitors and evaluate their mobile products for strengths and weaknesses to determine what prospective users think when using a competitor’s product. To do this, a researcher can provide users with their competitor’s app and gather data on how they interact with it.

Observational/Field Studies

A lab study places a user and a prototype of a mobile app in an environment where interactions between the two are observed. To gather meaningful information, this environment needs to resemble real-life situations to replicate how a user would actually use the product in their daily lives, and further evaluate whether the user can use the product as it is designed. Lab studies also allow researchers to interact with the subject and ask questions to gain further insights. 

Journal/Diary 

This research method involves having a user write down when, how, why, and other observations each time they use the app. This helps businesses and developers answer; when do users use our app? And in what contexts do they use our apps? This type of research also provides businesses with honest feedback that can reveal areas for improvement. 

5 Ways to conduct better user experience research

Ensure research insights are actionable

Understand the actionable part of your research:

• Does your team have a budget to take action? If the answer is no, your role might be to make a case for why more budget is necessary.
• Are there core features that your target customers must have?
• Are you timing the studies, so your research results have maximum impact?

Start your process with finding needs and gaps vs. selling solutions. In this age of information overload, too many meetings and cluttered inboxes, lead with ways for your audience to empathize, prioritize, and take action.

Good research should narrow the gap to the customer

There are ways to make the process of learning from research more personal: you can add a mix of real stories along with data, invite as many cross-discipline team members to be involved (while being practical about their time), and avoid the dreaded information dump at the end of a process by giving bite-sized updates.

Good presentation design matters. The presentation design shouldn’t overwhelm the information. Instead, incorporate the right image, visual or video clip rather than using a page full of text. Smaller chunks of data can make findings more palatable. It’s easy to get derailed by subjective opinions during share-outs (ex. I hate this shade of blue, I liked the old way better, etc.). Focus discussion around the customer, the hypothesis, and how well a proposed solution ultimately adds value to the customer.

Anticipate that things will go wrong

First, determine the right questions — what can feasibly be answered or can’t be answered with research and given method. Second, remember to over-recruit participants, assuming there will be no-shows, and that some people might just not be a good fit for the study even with a careful screener. Be wary of scope creep from too many stakeholders.

With any live session, there may be issues with call quality, connection, or video. Try to have a backup for prototypes, such as a simple slideshow presentation. Make sure to pilot the sessions as it’s easy to miss things once you’ve begun feeling comfortable with the content.

Moderate with the audience in mind

Ramp up your question difficulty, to help someone get adjusted to the conversation.

The experience of sharing feedback on a product is not always natural. You have to speak your thoughts aloud to a stranger (who might be rapidly taking notes), sometimes over the internet. Your role as a researcher is to set expectations for how the session will go and make the person on the other side feel comfortable as they can be given the situation.

Note the contradictions between behavior and what people say. People enjoy helping others and are generally agreeable by nature. They will try to answer the question you ask and give you the answers you want (even if the question is poorly constructed).

Track the core questions

Grouping questions under themes can help as you may be able to solve multiple problems in fewer actions. Note whether you’re trying to understand “why” (qualitative) vs. “how many, how much, how often” (quantitative) questions. There’s a bias toward generalizing big data because the numbers involved can feel impressive and fail-proof— surveying 500 people may appear to be a great thing as opposed to just doing interviews with five subject matter experts. Yet without understanding the “why” behind actions, observing, and listening for needs beyond what is obvious, big data can become a crutch for speculating that we already know what we’re looking for. It’s ok to end up with more questions, as long as they are better questions.

Final Takeaways

Consumers don’t want to jump from product to product, but instead find a brand that is designed to please them. Businesses that place value and importance on this will be the ones to see repeat visits, and eventually, new customers. User experience research is just one way to ensure you always keep their end-user top-of-mind when designing a mobile product. By employing the methods and tips listed above, you will be giving yourself the best chance to understand what your users like and don’t like truly. In an oversaturated market, that can be the difference between repeat usage or someone deleting your product.