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August 25, 2015 | Authored by: Vindicia Team

4 ways to improve subscription numbers

Over-the-top streaming services are booming right now, with new customers subscribing to streaming services. If companies want to get some of the business, they need to make sure they're providing people with what they want. According to a report by Juniper Research, globally there will be over 333.2 million people with a subscription to an OTT service by 2019. That's a dramatic increase from 91.1 million people in 2014. There will be millions of new customers entering the market. OTT services have to to make sure they're attracting these new customers. Here are a few suggestions toward that end:

"Services that don't have many different kinds of content might find that they're struggling to pull in the new customers coming into the market."

Provide a wider range of content

According to Digitalsmiths, around 38 percent of OTT video subscribers listed the selection of content as an important reason for their use of OTT streaming services in the first quarter of 2015. This is remarkable because regular cable and satellite connections have many channels. If OTT services want to compete in the future, they'll have to provide a wide range of content. Services that don't have many different kinds of content might find they're struggling to pull in the customers coming into the market.

Add original content

Original content is something subscribers want to see, according to Tech Zone 360. The business changed when Hulu released some original series back in 2013. Since then other services have followed suit. The Netflix-produced series House of Cards was extremely successful. Since Hulu and Netflix have offered these services subscribers, expect original content. If new OTT players want to compete, they will have to, too.

Add more devices

Mobile devices are a huge part of OTT's popularity, Digitalsmiths reported more than 27 percent of people list the ability to watch on tablets as important and around 20 percent want to be able to watch from their smartphones. The more devices an OTT service can easily be streamed to, the more people are going to sign up for that service.

Streamline billing process and user experience

Easy billing processes and good user experiences will help entice people and convince them to subscribe. Because there is a lot of competition in the OTT market, if your billing processes take a lot of effort by the subscriber and the streaming service is difficult to navigate or slow, the customer may just go someplace else. While this will certainly hurt your customer retention, it can also cause you to gain an unfavorable reputation. Poor opinions of your service could keep you from  gaining new customers.

About Author

Vindicia Team

Vindicia Team

We value our subject matter experts and the insights each of them brings to the table. We want to encourage more thought leaders to come together and share their industry knowledge through our blog. Think you have something interesting to contribute as a guest blogger? Contact us at info@vindicia.com