Using the Peak-End Rule to increase engagement and view time for VOD content

Using the Peak-End Rule to increase engagement and view time for VOD content

Rakuten TV is an over-the-top (OTT) digital distribution service, for both video-on-demand (VOD) of movies, as well as free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) of live TV channels.

Celonis SE is a German data processing SaaS company that works to improve processes by continuously observing client workflows, removing bottlenecks, and signalling the right actions to capture value.

+200 employees across Europe

+3,500,000 users worldwide

A/B Testing

How might we use our Recommendation engine to provide new value to users while increasing the time they spend in app?

How would I improve the Investigate value tool that Celonis offers with all its dashboards?

Currently, when a movie ends, the users experience ends with it, as they are forced to return to that movies home page. This represents a missed opportunity.

Why not offer users a new movie based on their viewing history?

It would allow Rakuten the opportunity to upsell additional content. And even if the suggested movie is not to the users liking, it would at minimum reinforce the idea that there is always new content for them enjoy when they return.

Hypothesis

Incorporating an automatic movie suggestion when the end credits play will increase VOD viewing time by seamlessly guiding users to new content.

Control

Variant

There are 3 UX psychological elements I employed to achieve the hypothesis:

There are 3 UX psychological elements embodied in the new design that proved our hypothesis correct:

The Peak-End Rule: A cognitive bias explaining that people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

The Paradox of Choice: The tendency for people to get overwhelmed when they are presented with a large number of options, and avoided by prioritizing the content that’s shown to them at any given moment.

Parkinson’s Law: Reducing the actual duration to complete a task from the expected duration will improve the overall user experience.

Selective Attention: The process of focusing attention only to a subset of the stimuli in the environment. Designers must guide users’ attention, prevent them from being overwhelmed or distracted, and help them find relevant information or action.

The experiment details:

GrowthBook platform

15 days

UK, Spain, France, Italy, Germany

162,000 unregistered users

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Success!

+2.4%

Additional TVOD orders

+19%

Ad inventory consumed

+4.5%

Longer session duration

78%

of users watch one additional movie

78%

of users watch one additional movie

+2.4%

Additional TVOD orders

+19%

Ad inventory consumed

+4.5%

Longer session duration

78%

of users watch one additional movie

78%

of users watch one additional movie

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