How WithLove Onboards New Users

After looking for best practices in how Netflix, Prime Video and Videoland onboard new users, this time Mark Jansen and Jessica Temmink look into one of “our own”; WithLove. This piece concludes the series of articles on the new user experiences of Streamers; We have learned a lot and hope that you have too!

Read the whole article by Mark and Jessica here:

Following up on the new user experience (NUX) of Prime Video, Videoland, and Netflix in
this article I will focus on the NUX of WithLove. WithLove is an SVOD-service owned and
operated by BeyondDutch, which is the company I work for.

Why research the NUX’s of SVOD-providers? The NUX is a driver of retention, which in turn is a key metric for subscription businesses like SVOD’s (see here). It’s also an area where product and marketing intersect, a favorite of mine. Plus, it’s timely and useful inspiration for the SVOD products that I work on. Therefore, I got curious after the NUX’s of Streamers.

How do Streamers onboard new users to the service? What are they trying to accomplish with the NUX? What’s in it for them, and what’s in it for the subscriber?

Having gone through 4 NUX’s, in this article I will draw some comparisons between them, and identify some potential improvement points.

Here’s the video recording where I sign up for WithLove:

Note: I took screenshots of the screens and created this video out of those. This distorts the TTV shown by the length of the video, as each screen takes only 2 seconds, and no time is recorded for interactions such as filling forms. Furthermore, just like the videos I recorded of the earlier 3 NUX’s, the video does not show the time spent in the external mobile payment app. 

TL;DR

• Time-to-value: ~2 min.
• The sign-up flow is as short as it gets; you create an account, select a payment method and do a 0.02 EUR payment. Then you are able to view your first video. Compared to Netflix, Videoland and Prime Video, WithLove saves two steps;

1. 1. 1. 1. The flow does not send the user to their email inbox to verify their account. This saves a step, and an important one; this can potentially increase MRR by 20% (source). You simply run less risk of ‘losing’ the user in their inbox, exposing them to their other tasks and other distractions. Account verification is present, but the user can do it at a later stage. First login works without account verification.
            .
         2. There is a step where I am inspired to download the WithLove Android app. However, this is optional; I can skip it now and proceed to view my first video as quickly as possible, which aligns with my goal and benefits the TTV.

• Potential points for future improvement:

1. 1. 1. In most NUX’s, improvement can be made my removing steps that are not really necessary. I don’t see any obvious big steps to cut here; the flow is about as short as it gets. So, here it might pay off to consider which additional steps might add value to the product experience, without doing too much damage to the TTV:
         .
      2. One such step is to promote the creation of Profiles, which Netflix does in their NUX. This might be worth adding as an optional step for the Plan that features multiple profiles, as this significantly improves the product experience (and, hopefully, retention) in case when multiple people make use of that WithLove subscription. To keep the TTV as short as possible, I believe this should be an easily skip-able, optional step – similar in nature to how WithLove promotes getting the mobile app.
         .
      3. About that step that promotes the mobile app; I am on an Android device, but I am shown two buttons; one for the Play Store, and one for the Apple App Store. I believe that web-browsers “know” which device OS I am on, so it might be worth hiding the Apple button for Android users and vice versa.
         .
      4. Like Netflix and Videoland, WithLove offers more than one Plan. Netflix and Videoland present the benefits of their Plans side-by-side. WithLove currently presents the two plans, Basic and Premium, underneath each other. Comparison ‘at a glance’ can be facilitated when the plans, and each benefits, are presented next to each other.
         .
      5. Like Disney+, WithLove offers billing cycles of one month and one year, with the year plan coming with the benefit of a lower average cost per moth compared to the month plan. WithLove represents this with a toggle. For users that don’t scroll down the page, the toggle for billing cycle is not visible. The toggle is located under the Basic plan, so this is related to the point above; with the plans presented next to each other, the billing toggle might also become visible ‘at a glance’.

 The Method

The performance metric I will measure is Time to Value (TTV):

“Time-to-value measures how long it takes for new users to experience value from your product.” (Kieran Flanagan)

Airbnb’s time-to-value is one click: search a location for rentals. For a streaming service, TTV is how long it takes for a new user to start viewing. I will literally time how long it takes before the video is showing and the shorter the better.

I will follow the flow in the language that is shown to me, that’s Dutch. Though I will write this piece in in English so a larger group of people can read along and benefit from this article.

The ‘chapters’ in the NUX

1. Search for the name of the service on Google. I click the first result that I recognize as ‘WithLove’.

2. Landing on withlove.tv. I click ‘try now 7 days for free’

3. I create an account using my first name, email address and password. There is no need to go to my email inbox to verify the account, as is a common pattern with the Streamers so far.

4. I land on the Plan Select page. The first thing I see is the Premium plan on top of the page. As I scroll down, I see that I can also select a Basic plan, and I can choose for paying per month or per year. I click on ‘Next’.

5. Here’s a page called ‘Almost done to get 7 days access for free!’. The text paragraph under the header explains that for safety reasons a 0.02 EUR one time payment needs to be made. Furthermore, it says I can cancel during the trial to keep from paying anything after this. I click ‘Next’.

6. The next page says ‘Successfully registered!’ And there are 4 calls to action; the main one (the red button) says “discover on which devices you watch”, the secondary one says “go directly to the platform”. Above these two buttons are two other buttons, that promote getting the Apple or Google Play apps. Because I am interested to watch my first video, I click “go directly to the platform”. I assume that means that I will go to the place where I can watch.

7. I land on the home-screen of WithLove. I see a button called “Play” so I hit that.

8. The video player loads.

Time to Value: ~2 min.

Ranking of Streamers (TTV)

1. 1. WithLove with a 2 min. TTV
   2. Netflix with a 3 min. TTV – see article here
   3. Videoland with a 5 min. TTV – see article here
   4. Prime Video with an infinite TTV – see article here

Appendix:

There are many ways to get to an SVOD-service like WithLove. You could for example assume that their app sits in the App Store and go there directly. In this research however, I will follow what I believe is the most common user journey; running a Google search for the name of the SVOD service on my smartphone (an Android, in my case).

In half of all cases that people are looking for a company they will do a ‘navigational search’ and type in the brand name into Google, rather than use the companies’ URL (source). It’s just easier.

I am on a mobile device as this is the primary device to access the web and I want to use it to watch my first video after signing up for the service. That first video view concludes the experience.

Caveats: the experience may not be representative for the user experience in other regions, such as the UK or the US. Experiences may vary further based on whether you are part of an A/B/X experiment.