It is fair to say that the world is going somewhere beyond traditional television. From the last decade, Indian media is growing and expanding like anything. The explosion of OTT services in recent years has resulted in various forms of content consumption.
While India was facing the COVID-19 wave and the entire country was in lockdown, the OTT platform grew by 20%.
It’s hard to admit, but people did not miss cinema halls and theatres during the lockdown. OTT platforms succeeded in hooking everyone into the binge-watching arena.
Discovering a new era of OTT platforms
A designer trying to build an OTT platform should learn about the prevailing competition in India. N new designers face stiff rivalry as existing OTT players add:
- Richer content
- Personalized experience
- More to their game
OTT platform is something young spectators had discovered first, and now everyone loves this source of entertainment despite their age and gender.
With saturated content and streaming manuals, entertainment streaming designers must know the right way to engage their viewers.
What do Indian users expect?
India is the fastest-growing OTT market, expected to reach over $3 billion over the next five years. The current media market in India is flooded with several OTT platforms.
With the recent increase in internet speed, competition in this area is growing every day.
At the same time, it raises consumer expectations of all OTT players.
Every designer knows that the type of images and videos determines the level of engagement in any video streaming platform.
Being a fast-growing market, this is the right time to create an OTT platform. The development of video streaming is no doubt ready to stay in the future.
Top 5 things to keep in mind as you design
Keeping an Indian viewer in mind, these are the five factors that will help companies build a successful OTT platform.
1- User Experience
This feature of OTT applications connects with the user elegantly by managing their content and information.
These features include managing-
- History track
- Preferred payments
- Several screens as per the option of the app
Keeping Indian users in mind, a new OTT platform should make sure to distinguish explicit and implicit content carefully.
Making a different profile for kids and adults is another way of curating the correct type of content for viewers.
In OTT design, interfaces consist of smaller components. It means that the entire interface can be divided into basic blocks and built from there. It is convenient for the users to choose what they want to watch when there is a clear division of content categories like films, TV series, genres, and language.
Related: 11 top web UX trends of 2021
2- Personalized design
Today’s customers want personalization in every step they take, from registration to the viewing experience. Designing a personalized platform, therefore, has to go beyond content. It should encompass the entire journey of a user through the program.Device management is another key to creating a personalized experience.
It offers users the option to choose:
- Multiple devices
- Quality streaming options
- Update options according to their preferences
It can help improve the user experience and provide protection.
To attract a wider audience, your OTT app or streaming platform must be compatible with every device.
If you are designing an OTT platform, pay keen attention to improve the user experience to keep gaining market share in a highly competitive environment. Otherwise, you may find your subscribers switching to other video platforms.
3- Multilingual option
OTT players are in high demand for content in local or regional languages. In a country like India, where more than 121 languages are spoken, content in a regional language is extremely important.
Multilingual content makes it easy for OTT service providers to grow their business, even across geographic boundaries.
If you add subtitles or audio in regional languages, you may attract more users from different geographical areas.
4- Simplified payment gateway
You can take inspiration from popular OTT platforms like Amazon and Netflix. They accept payments by:
- Credit or debit cards
- Digital wallets
- Real-time payment systems
This offers the widest options to the users.
With the multiple payment options available, it’s important to make this step simplified. Collecting subscription bills from users every month can ease the facilitation of the payment cycle.
Pro tip: Make sure to charge nominal rates from the users so that video streaming becomes affordable for the economic sections in India.
5- Easy subscription
Subscription strategies allow OTT platforms to diversify pricing and accommodate a larger and more diverse income bracket for users through a fixed “one price for all” subscription plan.
The key is to offer a subscription model that is suitable to the viewer's needs.
Annual and monthly subscription programs with free trials make users interested in a new OTT platform. Indian users are usually interested in affordable and nominal subscription options.
However, once they get to see a praiseworthy series, they are happy to invest in annual or quarterly subscriptions.
To build curiosity in users, you can offer one or two episodes of the series for free and keep the remaining episodes available only to paying members. This will pique the interest of your viewers and make them more likely to receive your subscription.
Related: Is the subscription based model right for your India based startup?
How to stand out among other OTT platforms?
This question is bound to occur in every developer's mind while designing an OTT platform. As a general rule, the OTT platform should strive to make streaming a seamless experience.
Talking about Indian competitors, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, and Netflix dominate the streaming market. Some of the local competitors getting popular are Alt Balaji, Voot, Sony Liv, etc.
It is imperative to understand the positive points of emerging competitors that motivate people to go for them.
Indian viewers are pretty diverse in terms of their content interests and demands. Therefore, new OTT platforms should target these niche consumer groups as well as large groups.
Regional content is also thriving a lot. Make sure to serve those groups too.
Summary
As new users start joining OTT platforms, designers will need to consider developing advanced streaming systems. A user-centric digital streaming platform is only possible when they create a well-designed system.
While content and quality matter, the way the interfaces are made also helps depict the user experience.
To take advantage of new opportunities, you need to stay updated on current trends, buying habits of users, and other varied metrics. If you are sincere in experimenting and innovating, your OTT platform will gain more customers in the long run.
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