Why media owners need a user experience focus

By Vijay Solanki, chief digital enablement officer at Southern Cross Austereo

• The power of UX – if content is king and distribution is queen, is your user experience, your ace?

Many of you may have read the line that "content is king and distribution is queen" and vice versa. This makes sense as media owners need to build bespoke content for each platform and make sure that content is there on what could easily be eight platforms – radio, podcast, audio clip, Facebook post, Instagram picture, Tweet, Youtube video, listening apps – in addition to the usual website posts. And that's without touching on functionality within a platform like Facebook Live or Video 360.

What is now becoming another key differentiator is the user experience on all of those platforms. Some of them might be out of our control, but nonetheless, as media owners we need to make sure we make it an easy seamless pleasurable experience for the consumer.

In the audio-visual world, many think Netflix is winning because it has the best content. While there is truth in that, Netflix has been working on another key area – the user experience. In the time between season two and season four of House of Cards, there have been 25 updates on the Netflix app. While some of the updates have been simple bug fixes, many are significant. They have updated the app to run on the latest iPads or work with 3D touch (part of the latest iPhone). They have also improved the kids' experience, giving them a different UX to adults, or they have modified the experience on Chromecast. They know that distribution is queen!

In our own world at SCA, we have just relaunched our NRL and AFL apps with improved functionality (including a new navigation and better controls) alongside new content like speedy stats.

As the content job becomes more complex, digital leaders need to make sure the product roadmap is dynamic, data driven and built to deliver the best consumer experience. It’s no good if we have the best content but we can’t get it to the user in a way that delights.

Connect with Vijay Solanki on LinkedIn here.