IMDb TV (now Freevee) is an ad-supported service with a rotating collection of free movies and shows, along with a few exclusive series. Amazon plans to grow it's original content lineup by 70% in 2022, with Amazon Studios to start producing original movies for the service.
Chicago market research firm Lab42 Research, LLC (Lab42) released new research on consumers of the streaming video providers Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu (based on a survey of 500 US consumers that use a streaming service). Two important items to note for IMDb TV- Prime Video customers typically like the content and product offering, but struggle with the CX. People with the Pluto TV and Vudu apps watch streaming video for over 98 minutes per session on their phones/app.
Given what we currently know about video streaming trends and customer behaviors, want & needs- IMDb TV identified a requirement to develop a stand alone mobile and tablet application.
Customers struggle with finding video content with environmental factors at play- particularly when viewing content on mobile when the general attention span is short and easily distracted or interrupted. Only 12% say they are able to easily find content on streaming platforms. For those times when they don’t know what they want to watch, customers show notable interest in innovative techniques to find new content. When determining what to watch, customers are influenced by four common environmental factors.
Twelve participants (male/female, US, 18-65) took part in a free competitive app exploration study conducted onusertesting.com . They were tasked to download a direct competitor’s video streaming app where no login or credentials were required and asked to describe their thoughts surrounding the overall app experience. The scenario was to imagine they wanted to watch a TV show or movie on their mobile device. From the study questions and tasks, we hoped to get a better understanding around:
Which apps do users prefer for video content? And why do they prefer them?
Goal: To find out the user’s behavior with these apps, their preferences and their intent.
What is the working mechanism of these apps?
Goal: To find how out competitors’ apps work, so that we can identify their pros and cons.
What are the “star” features of these apps/what sets them apart?
Goal: To identify functionalities that we may want to try and introduce as well- to see whether they already exist and, if they exist, how exactly they were implemented and whether a user sees benefit in them.
How comfortable does a user feel when using these apps?
Goal: To identify user loyalty (if any) and engagement in the apps of our competitors.
What is the visual structure and user interface of these apps?
Goal: To check the visual look & feel of the apps (user interface and interaction).
Taking a look at our competitors applications and experiences helped better inform us to determine what works and what doesn’t in terms of customers selecting/watching content on their mobile devices and allow us to seize certain opportunities within our own CX. After writing the study report I was able to distill some very obvious key opportunity areas for the IMDb TV mobile app that could scale well beyond just it's immediate use case.
While a standalone app, it was important to design the experience with reusable templates and components that would no only provide a clean, consistent functionalities and experience for the customer but would reduce tech development cost & time. Given the convenience of pushing app updates to users and based on the high lift for a dedicated search function, the team decided it best to launch a version without, with a fast follow to integrate that functionality as a later date. This allowed us to focus on implementing one of IMDb TV standout features as a free service- live streaming.
It was an important component to included a marker for customers to understand when to expect ads during streaming playback, as well as an indicator or countdown timer for how long to expect each add to play. While fast forward is not available during ad play, guardrails were written for the project to limit ads to 30 seconds per slot for average short play TV shows, and 90 seconds for larger movie slots. The ads business was vital to the platform running and to keep the service free for all customers.
The Verge notes the while the IMDb TV streaming app was previously made available on the majority of major streaming devices and some smart TVs, including Fire TV, Roku, Xbox, Android TV, Android TV OS devices, newer LG Smart TVs, PlayStation 4, Chromecast with Google TV, and Nvidia Shield. It was long awaited for mobile where the new IMDb TV app was specifically “designed for the streaming experience.”
Critical assumptions around integrating full search capability as a fast follow to launch was validated by various customer insights via feedback and reviews. Given the association to the IMDb brand and database itself, it is vital to provide customers a means to look for a specific genre, title, collection, cast member, etc. CX updates to include Search, a curated and personalized set of recommendations and watchlists/playlists, and 'snackable' series content that work well on mobile (Instagram reels or Tik Tok style).
