Helping Youtube Premium increase subscriber base in India- a UX case study
By: Chandan Kumar Tiwari
Tags: User Experience, User Experience Design, UX Research, Case Study, UX Design

After a lot of brainstorming, we narrowed down on the problems we wanted to take up. Here are the problems we chose to tackle, their solutions and the rationale behind them:

Problem: Users not knowing how to subscribe to Premium

We found during user interviews that users weren’t aware of how to navigate to Youtube Premium and subscribe to it. Currently, a user can find the Premium option only if they click on their profile/account. We realized it wasn’t common for users to check their profile and wanted to find a way to make Premium accessible even to the most casual user.

Solution: We added a Premium icon on the home page(top) to make it easily visible to users and thereby increasing the chances of users clicking on it.

Home page

Problem: Users unaware of everything Youtube premium offers

We learned during a user interview that the user was under the impression that all Youtube premium offered was an ad-free experience. The user also complained about not getting recommended Youtube originals enough.

Solution: To educate users about all its features, Youtube premium exclusive originals and subscription fee, clicking at the new premium icon on the home page will open a new page that would have all the information about Premium. The current Premium info page that can be found in user profile doesn’t have info about Premium exclusive originals, making it difficult for users to find exclusive content.

Premium page

Problem: No language options

During user interviews, we gathered that users weren’t interested in the Youtube premium exclusives available as all of them were in English.

Solution: For a diverse country like India, where users prefer watching content in various languages, we added a pop-up to help users pick the languages users prefer their content in. This would help Youtube better in recommending videos to Premium users and not just depend on the user’s watch history for recommendations. Youtube would also need to create more original content in Indian languages to cater to Indians.

Language options

Problem: Scrolling a lot or watching too many videos before finding the right video

When users search for tutorials and other informational videos for studies, research etc., they get too many results and it becomes difficult for them to decide which video has the best quality content and they end up scrolling a lot or watching videos with poor quality content or misinformation.

Solution: To build trust with the users, we categorized Youtube videos as verified and unverified. Verified videos on any topic would have a blue tick next to the video which will ensure the users that the content they are watching is of the best quality and has only the correct information. For this to be implemented, Youtube content creators will need to put their video up for verification and the Youtube research staff that can verify the content if they feel it is of great quality and completely related to the topic.

Verified Content

Problem: Recommended videos getting lost

In the user journey map created, the user while viewing a video, has multiple videos they want to watch from the recommendations below the video. But once one of the recommended videos is clicked, the other videos they wanted to watch are lost. It becomes difficult for them to recall or search for those videos.

Solution: Having an ‘Add to queue’ option on the app would help users add all the recommended videos to a queue and they can watch those videos one after the other.

Add to queue

Problem: Occasional users finding the subscription fee too high

We made an assumption about infrequent users who don’t spend much time on Youtube except on holidays. Users who are busy on weekdays and spend more time on Youtube only on weekends and holidays would find the fee too high for how rarely they use Premium.

Solution: We added a 1-day plan to make the fee more feasible for occasional users/weekenders as users felt the current plan only caters to regular users.

1-day plan

Prototype

My role

We as a team of five had different roles to play in this project. Here are the responsibilities I took up and the part I played in the completion of this project:

Secondary research: I did desk research and highlighted the necessary insights gathered with respect to user behaviour and interaction with the product.

Helped with the questions for user interviews.

Jotted down user insights after listening to the recorded user interviews.

Created the user journey map.

Reframed the pain points into ‘How might we’ questions.

Ideated, wireframed and designed the ‘Discover Premium’ and ‘Add to queue’ pages.

Next Steps

Some of the concerns we found during the research were around Premium not having enough exclusive content. To solve this, Youtube could collaborate with top YouTubers and create more exclusive content.

Youtube could help content creators generate revenue for content that doesn’t get monetized but gets a lot of views by making such content exclusive to Premium.

To expand its user base significantly in India, Youtube will need to have more Premium content in different Indian languages and not just in English.

Youtube could bring Youtube TV to India, add Indian channels and create another subscription plan for users who would want to watch Youtube TV on Youtube premium.

Summary

To summarize the key findings in this case study:

We found that some users were interested in subscribing but they weren’t aware of the additional features it offered or even knew how to navigate to the Premium page. Educating users about premium and its exclusive shows by adding the Premium icon on the home page will help attract more subscribers.

Adding other features like verified content will also help premium subscribers get the best content without searching too much or browsing too many videos to find what they want. It will also help quell the fake news/misinformation epidemic we are facing currently.

We have not only tried to cater to regular Youtube users but also occasional users by introducing a 1-day plan which will attract subscribers who would prefer watching movies ad-free on Youtube on their day-offs and help them from paying for the rest of the month when they don’t need it.

Adding some of these simple features for Youtube premium will add a lot of value to premium membership.

Learnings & Conclusion

It was really exciting for me to work on this problem statement and write my first case study. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the team despite our differences and clashes which we resolved amicably. I feel like I am a better UX designer after this hackathon because it really made me think on my feet and make quick decisions.

From being unsure of how much we could do in such a short span, to burning the midnight oil for two days straight

It was challenging to work with the few insights we gathered from user interviews as we couldn’t conduct extensive interviews due to the time crunch. Nevertheless, I am quite proud of what we, as a team solved in less than 48 hours.

I want to thank our mentors at Growth School for their encouragement and support. If it wasn’t for their help, I doubt we could have overcome the roadblocks and finish the project on time. I look forward to writing more such case studies and getting better with every new case study.