Clarifying questions:

Are We talking about worldwide or particular geography? India

Are we talking about any particular segment? Overall

Are we talking about particular demography? Overall

What is the main objective? increasing engagement

 

Describe the company and product

YouTube is the ultimate destination for online video sharing. The platform has established itself as a peerless social media website where modern video culture unfolds daily. Because of this, marketers have turned to YouTube to build brand relevancy and spur their video marketing strategies.

SWOT Analysis

Strength	Weakness
1. 2nd most watched site after Google 2. 80 – the number of available languages 3.More than 100 countries have local version of YouTube 4. User generated content and live video is on increase 5. Numerous Categories and useful video are uploaded daily.	1.       Podcasting is growing due to which podcaster is deviating from YouTube. 2.       Copyright material cause revenue loss for the original creator. 3.       YouTube doesn’t make any content exclusive to YouTube.
Opportunity	Threat
1.       Premium version can provide another benefit apart from blocking ads 2.       Paid subscription can provide another source of generating revenue.	1.       Binge-watching on other social networks such as Instagram and Facebook 2.       Video sharing platforms such as Amazon prime video and Netflix are the tough competitor

 

Strategic choices:

1. Add another benefit in premium version apart from blocking ads
2. Add paid subscription apart from premium version

Evaluation Criteria:

UX, Engagement, revenue, effort, competitive landscape

Evaluation of Strategic choice:

Here we will evaluate Paid subscription

UX: enabling users to purchase paid content will enhance user experience while in some rare scenario’s users will not get appropriate content. YouTube can improve the UX of its users by creating its own paid content which costs less to produce.

Engagement: from engagement perspective, paid content can increase engagement for the users if users are interested in content. It will incentivize content creators to invest more time and money in engaging with their users.

Revenue: from Revenue perspective, Paid content enables YouTube generate revenue from the share of the subscription or views. As YouTube pays content creator share of its revenue from advertising and views.

Implementation effort: YouTube has a large no. of channels and demographics from different countries which has different languages. As Google is a parent company which has huge technology resources but implementing of Paid content for one channel in 80 different languages will require significant investment.

Competitive landscape: Entering Paid content is good way to stay ahead of competitor such as Amazon Prime video or Netflix as it will add more userbase. However, entering Paid subscription will distract the YouTube from its free services model.

Recommendation:

By adding Paid subscription to YouTube, we can enhance the user experience and engagement among the users and generate additional revenue from enabling content creators to upload on YouTube. We can also increase userbase by attracting users from competitors such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. it is worth implementing Paid subscription. However, we should minimize the implementation effort and address the risks associated Negative content experiences with experienced and popular content creators.

Designing the Paid Subscription  

Here we will design the Paid Subscription for YouTube for Senior Citizens.

User Journey:

1. Senior wants to watch a video
2. Search on Google
3. Land on YouTube
4. Choose Language
5. Sign in
6. Pay
7. Browse/ search relevant content
8. Read description of content
9. Play video
10. Finish or may not finish
11. Come back again
12. Wants to be reminded which show/video they were watching
13. Start watching again

Identify problems in the journey & Features which would remove these problems

1. Discovery on Google – we need directory sort of page for discovery
2. Identification that user is a senior citizen
3. Ask during Signup process itself
4. For signup, seniors might not have Google account, so we rely on Username/Password Flow or face recognition or voice recognition.
5. Choose preferred language
6. A drop-down to select language with voice search.
7. Payment: – we will have to depend upon Payment partner like Google pay or Free Trial or Voucher Code
8. For Content discovery
9. Search – Voice search
10. Recommendations
11. Programming solely focused on senior
12. Read description: UI focused on seniors with large fonts/ thumbnails which are easier to read & comprehend.
13. Play Video
14. Remember subtitle preference
15. Choose subtitle
16. Choose resolution/quality
17. Come back again: Deep linking
18. Start watching again
19. Continue watching
20. Wishlist Feature
21. Auto-login unless explicitly sign-out
22. Other generic features
23. Accessibility such as 2 to 3 settings for sizes of fonts and thumbnails which user can choose according to his or her choice
24. Sign-out
25. Video quality selection
26. Forgot password

Feature prioritization

Features	Impact	Complexity	Must have/Optional
SEO Landing Page	H	M	Optional
Sign up- Username/Password	H	L	Mandatory
Preferred language	H	L	Optional
Age Identification	H	L	Optional
Payment	H	H	Mandatory
Voice Search	H	M	Optional
Normal search	H	L	Mandatory
Recommendation	H	M	Optional
Programming & personalization	H	L	Optional
UI for seniors	H	M	Mandatory
Choose subtitle	H	L	optional
Remember Subtitle	H	L	Optional
Choose resolution	M	L	Optional
Deep-linking	L	H	Mandatory
Continue watching	H	M	Optional
Wishlist	M	M	Optional
Auto-login	H	L	Optional
Accessibility	H	M	Optional
Sign-out	L	L	Mandatory
Forgot Password	M	L	Mandatory

 

First, we will do all the mandatory features which will create the MVP, then pick features with High Impact, Low complexity features.

Summary   

We have to find the next big opportunity for YouTube. Which we found as Paid subscription. We evaluated it on the strategic parameters UX, Engagement, revenue, effort, competitive landscape and did recommendation. Then we have to design Paid subscription. We designed it for senior citizen. We described user journey, identified pain points and found features which will solve these pain points. Then we evaluated these features on the basis of complexity, impact and mandatory. We create the MVP first on the basis of mandatory features and then features with High impact and Low complexity.