The Benefits of Previewing Videos on Mobile Apps

Featured article by Emily Roberts, Independent Technology Author

In recent news, the most popular streaming video channel in the world, Netflix, said that their mobile app is soon to be updated and released to consumers to finally include previews on mobile devices. These previews will be 30 seconds in duration and are designed so that viewers won’t need to flip their mobile devices to see the video preview. In other words, they can be watched in portrait without the need to flip to a landscape screen. However, those are just the highlights of the newest Netflix mobile updates.

Mobile App Development a Growing Market

More and more people are accessing the Internet from mobile devices for everything from looking for new restaurants to finding videos to watch after work or school. In fact, that is what prompted Google to change their algorithms a few years back with the much feared Mobilegeddon and now Netflix has jumped on the bandwagon. With a growing number of viewers looking to watch Netflix on the go, it only made sense to the company to undergo a mobile app development that would make for a much better UX, user experience.

Even so, Netflix is just one of the companies looking to improve the mobile UX which leaves companies large and small seeking mobile apps that would “…improve the way in which consumers could access their sites.” This is according to developers at Elinext who state that mobile app development by Elinext is at an all-time high.

Round Thumbnails Like Those Seen on Google Docs

For a brief description of what the screen will look like, think about those round thumbnails portraying users on the top of every Google Doc with multiple users. Each thumbnail represents a different video and they can be swiped to see what’s available in preview format or tap the thumbnail to see the preview.

It makes it much easier to navigate the site on a mobile device and the best part is that this enables users to continue looking from preview to preview without the need to go back to the main menu/screen. Some reviews are saying that this would also make a nice feature to add to the PC format because viewers find it annoying to hit the back arrow if they don’t like the preview they’ve just viewed.

Netflix Mobile Stats

Just a few years ago, these stats might have been difficult to believe but in today’s mobile market, they substantiate just how important it is to cater to a mobile audience. With more than 125 million global subscribers, 25 million of whom watch videos on mobile devices, that equates to 1/5 or 20% of their total viewership. That’s a significant part of their business which is only forecast to grow exponentially over the coming few years.

While Netflix is the latest mega corporation to announce mobile app development in the works, other corporations are following suit. Today’s consumer is literally bonded to their mobile device and if any business hopes to grow their market share, they will learn from these enhancements Netflix is making to keep customers on board. It will be interesting to see what follows…