The pandemic helped the OTT platforms skyrocket in terms of subscriptions and viewing time. India is not just the second most populated nation but also one of the biggest markets for OTT platforms.

Whether it is movie releases, EPL, IPL, or other quality original shows, OTT platforms in India continue to revolutionize since the past two years when people are still somewhat confined to the walls of their homes.

This massive growth has indeed pushed OTT players in India like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ Hotstar, Zee 5, SonyLiv, Voot, ALTBalaji, MX Player, TVFPlay, Jio Cinema, YouTube Premium, Discovery+ to win the cut-throat competition by moving towards innovation.

As OTT viewing has become the new norm, consumers are free to choose what, when, where, and how they want to view content.

Did You Know Even before the lockdowns started worldwide, the OTT market had flourished by 15% in 2019?

With so many options available in the market, churn rates for OTT services are high too. Thus, pressuring the OTT players to deliver not just content but also a well-designed user interface (UI).

If content is king, we’d say time is queen. The increasing amount of content should not lengthen the selection time for the users. A long or tedious selection process can get the user frustrated, abandon watching, or move to another platform altogether.

The user demographics also play a vital role in this conversation. Talking particularly about the Indian subcontinent, users over here prefer economic deals, a super friendly interface, an easy onboarding process, high vernacularism, and content for all age groups.

In this article, Selectra decodes the top 7 factors contributing immensely to the overall user satisfaction for OTT platforms in India.

Before we jump on to that, let us first have a quick look at the universal (and basic) expectations of an OTT Platform user.

Expectations from OTT Platforms in India

So we sat down to write this list of universal basic expectations of an OTT platform user:

• Identify value in the OTT offerings before picking a plan, episode, movie, documentary, or anything else available on the platform.
• Be able to keep moving forward while consuming content, from one episode to another or switching between movies or series.
• Have a seamless navigation experience on the platform right from signing up, the payment gateway, logging in, and finally watching the content.
• Experience ease and comfort while using the platform.

Now let us dive into the Indian demographics. What is it exactly that an Indian user wants from an OTT platform? What makes an OTT platform in India irreplaceable? What leads to an enhanced OTT platform interface? We have identified the below factors as answers to all your queries.

1. Easy On-Boarding

It is critical to have a quick and easy onboarding process in place for new customers. OTT players should avoid asking users for unnecessary details and stick to asking for crucial personal information and permissions in contextual terms.

Indian customers dislike being handheld through the onboarding process. So, providing the option to skip makes it less cumbersome and an easy choice for them.

Additionally, to make the onboarding process speedy and exciting, OTT platforms can look into allowing users to explore the app before the actual purchase. Think of it more like an app tour that makes the customer excited about using your platform.

Disney+Hotstar promotes popular content and displays membership benefits on the landing page

2. Adaptable UX for Multiple Devices

Honestly, we think that a unified content delivery on multiple devices is now a mandatory business choice for OTT platforms across the globe. Today’s users consume content from not one or two but multiple devices. So delivering a consistent user experience across devices allows users to consume content on tablets, smartphones, laptops, or smart TVs at their convenience.

In fact, this also helps users to mark content as ‘watch later on’ or add to ‘favorites’ and retrieve the same at a later stage on any other device of their choice.

3. Tailor-Made User Experience (UX)

There are different ways through which OTT India can offer a tailor-made UX to its Indian users. The best way to go about this by building an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered recommendation engine. To be able to present specific content that users will likely enjoy is critical for a service to adapt, contextualize, and make relevant recommendations.

We unitedly agree that Netflix’s recommendation algorithm is the finest (or most accurate) amongst other OTT platforms in India. Netflix filters out relevant content for its viewers by investing in a strategic MI (Machine Learning) algorithm that goes beyond giving recommendations and personalizes the search results. Amazon Prime Video, for that matter, also has been successful in recommending content to match every mood basis of its MI capabilities.

4. Design Systems

We believe that a well-defined App design system can immensely contribute to creating well-made user-centric digital products. Yes, typography, colors, and themes play vital roles, but the overall build of the interface reveals the true picture. Other incorporations like the cover jacket, ratings, first lines of synopsis, and cast details also make it easy for users to pick a product.

5. Simplifying Viewing Experience

Well, the journey towards customer satisfaction does not end at simplifying the discovery of the content process. OTT platforms in India should also make the watching experience comfortable.

The below features have been successful in the past:

• Flexibility to switch the subtitles on or off;
• Capability to resume the content from last played time;
• Flexibility for easy start, stop, rewind, fast forward, playback options
• Choose from the different video quality options.
• Enabling Users to Go Vernacular

6. Enabling Users to Go Vernacular

India is a nation with 22 official languages. How can you tap this 1.3 billion people market by having monolingual shows? The simple answer is by going vernacular.

Releasing shows of native or regional languages can help the OTT platforms in India drive more user satisfaction. Netflix, for that matter, has stayed one step ahead of its competitors and was the first to include the ‘Top 10’ row, parental controls, and quick downloads.

7. Diversity and Variety of Content

Lastly, besides being vernacular-friendly, OTT platforms in India have also added different content for various age groups. For example:

• Eros Prime now caters to 10+ languages.
• Zee5 formed an ecosystem for kids that contains OTT and other social elements.
• VOOT Kids and Nickelodeon, and Sonic pulled their socks up with a strong content line-up to engage kids

In short, kid-friendly content and features like parental controls and password locks eventually facilitate OTT user-profiles and help create a user-friendly interface.

Conclusions

We hope this blog successfully brought out some important themes relevant to the UX of OTT platforms in India. We’ll be back with such fresh content soon.