UX/UI Case Study : Increasing YouTube Premium subscriptions in India

As a part of a 48 hour hackathon, I along with 4 other UX enthusiasts designed a solution to increase YouTube Premium memberships in India. Idea being tempting active youtube users to try premium and make them feel the need to continue using it because of its addictive offerings..

I recently took part in a 48-hour hackathon organized by growth school where we were divided in a group of 5 and were presented with 5 problem statements to solve. We all decided to go with elimination approach until we narrowed down to a problem statement we were all excited about solving.

Problem statement

In the current experience, there is little difference between free Youtube users and users who pay a monthly subscription. The only primary difference is the absence of Ads for paying subscribers which is not enough for Indian customers to pay. Youtube wants to increase its user base of paying subscribers in India. Create a more personalised experience for Youtube premium subscribers to help sell more premium subscriptions.

Why we chose this problem?

Youtube is a very common and a popular platform and we have a lot of active members on youtube yet the number of people using the premium membership are very less.

I felt this was a challenging problem to solve as for most of the other topics we had to enhance the experience of users but for this we had to convince the users to buy a subscription and pay from their pockets. Here it was all about understanding the mindset of a diverse set of users and motivating them and I was super excited about this bit.

Like what you see? Here’s our design story!

OUR DESIGN STORY

Okay so 48 hours seemed too less for solving such a challenging problem and also enough by the end of the submission. But that’s what companies have to do too to deliver critical stuff at the critical times.

Gist of design process we followed

All 5 of us contributed during the whole process and some stepped up where they felt they had more experience and skill set. I am discovering and loving research these days and I contributed most around primary and secondary research , empathy mapping , pain points identification, wireframes, rationalizing and reviewing the final frames based on the research

DESK RESEARCH

We identified major areas we wanted to research more upon and then divided ourselves to collect maximum insights in these areas

1. Collecting stats and insights around youtube, youtube premium, behaviour of users around purchasing subscriptions.
2. Doing a competitive research for what other streaming platforms are offering and why people have subscribed to those platforms
3. Discovering the current youtube and youtube premium platforms and improvement scope.

Important insights

1. India is the 2nd largest market for streaming services because of its sizable population of 1.3 billion people — US (16%), India (9%), and Japan (5%) top countries for YouTube traffic, as of July 2020, according to Alexa stats
2. YouTube statistics show that 95% of YouTube content is India consumed in local languages. A one-size fits all international approach to content creation, then, will not pass muster in this huge and diverse nation.
3. As of Youtube originals in very limited language since creator spends in self money
4. One of Google’s biggest problems with this is that Android users expect everything to be “free” and they’re pissed when it’s not. They’d rather steal someone’s work then cry about malware when infected rather than pay a couple of dollars for something.
5. YouTube Premium’s ad-free experience is pretty much a necessity for anyone that spends a significant amount of time on the platform.
6. Indian users are hesitant to add card details to try to free premium subscription.
7. There are other 3rd party offerings like Youtube Vanced which have similar features like what youtube premium is offering. People are even using ad blockers. This shows people do want an ad free experience but are not willing to pay for the whole subscription.
8. People pay for subscriptions only when they feel the platform has exclusive and trending content to offer on a regular basis that they wont be able to watch until they pay.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

We went about conducting the primary research because after the secondary research we had a lot of assumptions and we needed to validate those. I added a poll on instagram to identify potential users and side by prepared a questionaire with varied topics to touch upon during telephonic user interviews.

Primary Research — Instagram polls, User interviews, Circulating Surveys

Themes touched during User Interviews

• What kind of streaming/content watching platforms/apps you use on a daily basis?
• If youtube - How often do you use youtube and what is your preferred language of watching youtube videos?
• What do you like about youtube? What annoys you? (Ask the user to explore the app along)
• For what streaming platforms have you taken the subscription? What motivated/convinced you to buy them?
• What does ‘premium membership’ mean to you?
• Have you tried youtube premium? If yes start talking about their experience if no why as they offering the experience for free for trial?
• How much are you aware about what youtube premium is offering right now?

Here are some important Voice of Customers gathered during the primary research where we saw some potential gaps to work on and improve.

Empathy Mapping

After separately talking to different sets of users, everyone collaborated to discuss what kind of findings we had and in order to club them together, empathy mapping seemed to be a good process to move on with. I went ahead with empathy maps to consolidate our findings about the users making it easier to analyze the collected information.

We Identified 3 user groups

User Group — 1 : Regular Youtube Users — Not tried premium

This group contain users who are regular youtube visitors who spend good amount of time on youtube for watching random videos and music, podcasts etc. They complain of long, unskippable ads and not being able to minimize youtube on phones however they are not aware that all this is already provided by youtube premium. They haven’t tried youtube premium even for free as dont like adding card details for trial and also they feel it doesn’t have much to offer.

User Group — 2 : Youtube Premium Users

Group 2 are the users who tried the free premium subscription and now they can’t go back to streaming with ads. They also use youtube for music now. However they feel youtube premium has nothing much to offer apart this and the account looks exactly the same as well. There is no exclusive content as well. Also they are enrolled in a cheap family plan now but might even discontinue if the price increases as it won’t be worth it then.

User Group — 3 : Tried Premium — Switched to MOD Version

Group 3 contains users who tried the free version and really liked the ad free experience and hence they have switched to third party apps like youtube vanced and ad blockers as they are not willing to pay for the whole subscription. They liked a few things from the subscription and they have switched to some alternatives for them because paying for the package seems less worth it to them due to lack of features offered.

Challenges and Scope of Improvement Identified

1.User doesn’t like ads coming up in between and the fact that they can’t minimize while youtube is playing on phone but are not aware of these premium subscription offerings.

“Vaise to youtube sahi hai but ads bohot aane lagi hain aajkal. I just close the popup for ‘try premium’ ”

2. User is not ready to spend so much to just block the ads and they feel youtube has nothing else to offer.

“Why can't I pay just to not have ads without having to pay extra for other stuff I don't use? I would love the ad free experience, but I can't justify 12 bucks a month to block ads.”

3. User feels others can also watch all the stuff on youtube I am just getting only a few additional features. There is a need to revamp the look and offer more exclusive content.

“In the back of the mind I know ki ads nhi aa rhi but the premium account feels the same too”

4. Users feel annoyed that they have to add their card details to even trying a free membership. Sometimes they are skeptical to add the card details.

“Yaar free subscription ke lie kyun daalni hai card details, maine to islie try hi ni kia”

5. User feels that since youtube is more recommendation based, they might miss out on the original content

“Originals are sometimes easy to miss. Although I have been subscribed to Premium for two months, I rarely get recommendations for Originals, and few if any have popped up on my home page. ”

How Might We

WHY HMW? — To convert challenges into opportunities and to come up with solutions to the major challenges faced by our users, we quickly converted our major scope areas to how might we questions

1. HMW Make youtube premium feature reach the users in a better manner so that it can help them experience the app better
2. HMW sell youtube premium to just have one of the offerings of blocking the ads
3. HMW overall improve the experience of youtube premium and give it a better feel over existing app
4. HMW make the premium users feel valued and Offer them exclusive content
5. HMW get the potential active youtube users to try youtube premium experience which would help them to lure them to subscribing when they are skeptical to adding card details for trying something for ‘free’.
6. HMW make the original content be more visible to the premium members so they they feel they are

Wireframes

Sketches & Wireframing

We went on suggesting solutions for the different gaps identified and prioritized some based on what we felt were real pain points to the users. Then we grouped ourselves and created sketches and wireframes for different features. Some went for paper prototypes other chose tools. I am more of a paper sketches person specially under time crunch :P We iterated over until we were happy with what we were proposing, rationaling each solution with the research did.

Solutions and Screens

More Visibility of Youtube premium on Youtube home page. Free reward for active users to try premium without having to add card details. Made use of “Crown” icon.

Different Packages — Ad free package, Regional Package, Old is Gold, Customized pack

New revamped look for Youtube Premium accounts with more emphasis on youtube premium and youtube original

More Personalized Notifications based on user liking and choices

PROTOTYPE

Learnings

1. Working in team can be overwhelming but at the same time comes with a lot of learnings and perspectives that is an important part of design process
2. Hackathons and pressure situations can sometimes push those buttons in us which encourages us to deliver quality stuff within time frames.
3. Attempted to solve a design problem from scratch - covering all the steps in just 2 days.

Thanks for you time. Looking forward to your reviews and comments. :)