Thoughts on the Television User Experience
November 01, 2010
In the pay-tv industry content is still king, but this statement doesn’t mean what it use to. The pay-tv industry is largely built on content exclusivity, exclusive rights to sports, films, channels and series. But that exclusivity is being steadily eroded. On one side regulators are constantly pushing to reduce or remove exclusivity, but the real threat to exclusivity is from over the top services from the internet. Today, consumers general have a choice to get the same content from either a pay-TV service provider or from a legal or illegal internet source, and finding content on the internet is getting easier and easier. A TV service provider’s defense against this is the user experience they provide. A strong and compelling user experience can actually make over the top services a positive addition to a service provider’s services.
Consumers are lazy, particularly when sitting in front of a TV. Consumers will turn to easiest to access source for the content they are interested in, on the device they have at hand, at the quality they want. Traditional service providers can offer a uniquely convenient and consistent use experience across devices and content sources, with an ease of use that will truly appeal to consumers. This make the user experience a true differentiator for service providers against both traditional competitors but also new entrants.
The user experience is not just a key differentiator in winning and retaining customers it can also have a positive impact on revenue, margin and operational costs.
A user experience that provides effective content discovery through promotion, search, recommendation and community can enhance revenues, both in driving pay-per-view purchases but also through increasing the perceived value of subscriptions to consumers. Consumers often churn off premium subscription packages as they can’t “find” value in the packages as they don’t find the content that is relevant to them in the channels bundled in the package. If the user experience can reveal to the consumer the content relevant to them then they should value to package much more highly. Also, an effective user experience should be able to up-sell consumers to higher value packages.
Easily finding a movie amongst the myriad of choices that matches a consumers mood will make a consumer more likely to make a pay-per-view purchase. If the movie comes from a broad library not just the latest blockbuster then the service provider’s margin on the movie is likely to be much higher. The studios retain a much larger percentage of the transaction value for movies when they first enter the pay-per-view window.
Better, easier to use interfaces will generate less issues and therefore generate less customer calls and reduce operational expenditure. The loyalty a great user interface can inspire can significant reduce customer retention costs.
Increased competition but also good business sense is making the use experience a key element of a service provider’s strategy. There is an imperative for service providers to focus on and invest in their end-user experience.
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