User behavior and content consumption patterns using User Journey Mapping
The International market for content streaming had a value of about $30.9 Billion in 2015 and it is predicted to grow up to USD 123.2 billion by the year 2024. As more and more of the population become tech-savvy, the potential of OTT platforms has taken center stage. While this is a great opportunity for such content streaming platforms to rise to fame and fortune, it also means that they need to be able to capitalize on the opportunity in the best way possible. With the increasing customer base, it becomes necessary to act upon the vast user preferences.
What is better than having a first-hand insight from customers about their experience with content consumption on your platform. A lot of the lag seen in content streaming platforms is due to the lack of communication and prompt feedback from users. Was the loading speed too slow? Was it difficult to find the show they needed? Were there egregious advertisements that triggered them to drop off?
Having these answers would fill the gap between business and user, enabling the platform to take required measures, add the necessary functionality, or amp up the required aspect of the user experience to satisfy their customer, helping them inch ahead of their contemporaries in the same field.
If you want your users to have a platform experience that is based promptly off their feedback, with little or nothing left to complain about, then User Journey Mapping is the way to go.
What is User Journey Mapping?
- User journey mapping is an excellent tool that can be used to gain insight into the user’s perspective. It can provide knowledge of customer behavior from the time the user enters your platform to the time they leave.
- Starting at the landing page, when a user just arrives at your platform, through their experience of browsing, searching, watching, and appreciating or disliking content, until the time they either indulge in a transaction, like buying a particular movie or renting it or just drop off, user journey mapping follows a user through their entire journey and picks up the strongest aspects of your platform, that impresses the users the most as well as the vulnerable spots that frustrate the user.
- Rather than simply using data, which a lot of OTT platforms already do, making use of data coupled with user journeys through a story helps see a pattern in the way in which users behave once on your platform.
- Different techniques are used to visualize the relationship that the user has with the platform. Holistically viewed, the user stories make it easier to find pitfalls in the platform engagement and work on them with laser focus.
Consider any platform, for example, Netflix. Say if according to User Mapping, 60% of the users begin at the homepage, go to the Category of comedy shows and then drop off, chances are that the comedy shows page isn’t engaging enough, so need to be spruced up, probably by showing relevant shows, or adding more to the comedy library, etc.
Why User Journey Mapping?
The reason why using User Journey Mapping is essential to the success of a content streaming platform is because the ultimate goal is to provide the users an elevated experience that differentiates your platform from the others and keeps users hooked on.
- Detecting patterns: This is made possible by User Journey Mapping by detecting patterns in the content consumption of users and shaping their experience based on that information and analysis.
- Enhancing Customer Relationships: The relationship that is built between a user and a business, is what holds the most value in deciding if the user converts into a customer. Being able to utilize such personalized insights of a user and being able to focus on the entire user population or a particular chunk is key to understanding the user’s side of the story and being successful in providing them just the kind of services that they need, nothing less.
- Identifying pitfalls: Being able to identify the difference in performance between different constituents of the business model is the key to extracting the maximum business potential out of your model.
So if you want to take user experience a notch higher, User Journey mapping is the way to go.
What benefits does User Journey Mapping Bring?
Getting the opportunity to view your own platform from a customer’s lens is like being served user reviews on a platter. User Journey mapping is packed with a plethora of advantages when it comes to content streaming platforms.
1. Predicting customer behavior: Most customers have similar behavioral patterns, so by having a progressive approach based on user journey mapping, the number of negative reviews will eventually reduce in the future. This will in turn help improve the conversion rate of future users.
2. Better conversion rate: Conversion rate is the rate at which a potential customer turns into a customer.
For example, According to a study by Netflix, showing all of the content available on the platform to customers only proves to be distracting, leading to many users browsing through but never really subscribing. Identifying the most engaging content and displaying that has better chances at increasing the conversion rate.
3. Better Customer Retention: Customer retention is another performance measure that is taken very seriously in the industry. Being able to satisfy the customers with the optimal customer experience and providing the kind of content during browsing or the user functionalities they need while watching content, will improve customer retention.
4. Targeting pain points efficiently: It makes it easier to mobilize the team to focus on the evaluated weak spots and work meticulously on them. Being able to prioritize tasks based on which is more crucial for user experience and platform performance based on content consumption behaviors.
5. Cost-Effectiveness: The more satisfied the customers are, the less likely they will raise issues to customer support. Over time, as issues reduce, investment in customer support can be decreased. Also, positive word of mouth can account for a major chunk of marketing.
6. Unparalleled user experience: As and when required a single user journey or a particular channel through the platform can be focussed on to find the nitty-gritty and minute flaws that may have been overlooked earlier which add fines to the platform making it stand out from the rest.
What are the Applications of User Journey Mapping for content streaming platforms?
User Journey mapping has various applications for content streaming platforms to help cater to customer pain points and also enhance the aspects that they love.
- Holistic approach: When consolidated and viewed in a cumulative manner, the entire user journey can be viewed through user journey mapping.
- Sectional Approach: It is possible to focus on a certain section of users based on factors like gender, age group, time of visiting the platform, etc, and gauge interest patterns to identify the spots in the user journey that need to be worked on and made better.
For example, The user journey can point out the categories that are popular with consumers who are late-night binge-watchers as compared to those who log on during the day.
- Identifying aspects that drive away customers: T
he stages at which a customer drops off, exposing the pages that need to be worked upon with more focus, making them more engaging can be pinpointed using user journey mapping.
- Identifying popular aspects: It helps gain knowledge, recognizes patterns into what kind of content motivates the user, the most popular categories, content type preferred, etc. Different customer and company touchpoints like advertisements, transactions like buying a subscription can be analyzed, for example, which category do most users visit before making the decision to buy a subscription.
Conclusion
Keeping in mind all the above advantages as well as applications that User Journey Mapping based techniques can provide to content streaming platforms, it is an icing on the cake if the tool you use is made specifically keeping OTT platforms in mind.
It is an impeccable way to take user experience on your platform a notch higher and in turn lead to an improved browsing experience, higher conversion rates, prolonged user sessions, ultimately leading to increased revenue and higher customer retention.
RecoSense provides a product that is just right for providing everything you need for User Journey Mapping to capture engagement patterns.
With expertise in handling several platforms and dealing with over 50 million users per month, an efficient AI engine to deliver unparalleled customer satisfaction, and a dedicated 24/7 managed service for uptime, it offers a tool that can be easily customized to exactly fit the requirements of your content streaming platform and take customer experience to a whole new level.
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