UI quality more important than recommendations in service satisfaction
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Editor
| 15 October 2019

Research from Parks Associates study of consumer responses to video systems has revealed that quality of the UI and the ease of finding content are the most likely factors to drive willingness to recommend a video service.

The UI Preferences and Content Discovery report examined consumer preferences related to new UI options and the ways that consumers find, and want to find, entertainment content. It also explored preferences by owners of various in-home devices and examines interest in new innovations such as smart speakers, personal assistants, and voice interaction.

Indeed the analyst found that as many as 70% of US broadband households with a major video service consider their user interfaces to be good, with almost half rating them very good, thus spurring them to recommend such services to others.

The fundamental importance of such issues was also clearly revealed when Parks highlighted a fifth of households cancelling an OTT subscription cited an inability to find something to watch as a factor. The survey found that 70% of CE purchasers said ease of use was a very important purchase consideration and that when searching for something to watch, 12% of OTT users consider recommendations from the service as their first step.

“User interfaces are a key factor driving satisfaction for OTT services, and Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon – the big three in OTT streaming – have largely set the standard for content navigation and ease of use,” observed Kristen Hanich, senior analyst, Parks Associates, commenting on the UI Preferences and Content Discovery report. “Other services have had to follow similar structures established by these three, but as new OTT services launch with greater and greater expectations, innovations in UIs could be an even greater differentiator contributing to their success or failure.”