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One big false generalization. I mean Netflix's interface sucks for discovery, and the suggested improvement in the article is to force me to look at one sugges

One big false generalization. I mean Netflix's interface sucks for discovery, and the suggested improvement in the article is to force me to look at one suggested movie at a time? Seriously!?

duncanawoods 11y ago
Any claims for discovery efficiency is a lie. Shitty UX's "convert better" due in part to the way that they hurt their users. Netflix cannot let you discover there is nothing you want to watch in their entire catalogue because you will unsubscribe. They have to make you believe there is more that you have not found. Similar to Amazon, they cannot make search so efficient that you have the time and energy to search other sites or price compare. The strategy is to make sure they are the first place you visit and then exhaust you to the point you settle with what they have to offer.
- computator 11y ago
  > Netflix cannot let you discover... They have to make you believe there is more that you have not found. That's an insightful observation and explains perfectly why Netflix does not provide a simple straight list of all titles that you can scroll through. I'll bet that the Netflix engineers have wanted to add such an obvious feature, but someone in marketing yelled, "Don't!" If you ask the average non-techie user how many titles their Neflix subscription has, they'll be astonished to hear that it's only ~7750 in the US and even less in other countries (eg., ~4478 in Canada)[1]. Even though this information is easy to discover, it seems that most people don't bother to know. [1] http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.ca/ http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.ca/
  - bru_ 11y ago
    7,750 is a shockingly low number for a service like Netflix, but I guess it reflects the fact that most movies aren't really that good and you'd probably only be interested in watching a maximum of 10k titles over your lifetime, maybe 15,000 hours / 2 years of content
  - throwaway7767 11y ago
    That link is really interesting. I knew that the netflix collection was much smaller than people assume, but I never thought it'd be this small. I know people with personal media servers that could easily compete with this collection (not that I'm endorsing that, just throwing it in for scale).
  - prawn 11y ago
    The other thing I've noticed having recently trialled Netflix in Australia is that they seem to push TV series harder than movies. I guess if you watch a movie, you're done in a couple of hours. If you get hooked on a TV series, you might be watching episode after episode for a number of seasons.
- bduerst 11y ago
  I think you're confusing search intent with discovery intent. Of course Netflix isn't going to stop showing you movie options when you're trying to discover something new. If the user doesn't intentionally know what they want to watch, they need to continually see content to discover it. And Amazon search isn't terrible because of a price-hiding scheme, it's because they have a terrible UI company-wide, from the Kindle to EC2. People typically aren't browsing Amazon to discover new products - they search and move on. Are you suggesting that Amazon search should be an internet price aggregator too? It seems like you're playing the Halloween music early by saying these companies have terrible UX as a complex ploy to keep you engaged while not giving you what you want. The reality is that they have wide userbases which are fickle to UI changes, and it takes time and research to roll out anything new.
  - bru_ 11y ago
    Can you explain the difference between search intent and discovery intent
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      I want some shoes, I shall filter the shoes to match my preferences. I feel like shopping, I wonder what's on sale.
  - duncanawoods 11y ago
    >> And Amazon search isn't terrible because... Amazon may not be intentionally malicious. When you make decisions only on a metric like sale conversions, you will be optimising other factors you are not even aware of. Nothing necessitates that the best UX and happiest customers will be the most profitable. For example, I recall a story about Amazon trialling infinite scroll. It had positive customer feedback and users viewed more products compared to pagination. However, sale conversions dropped so obviously it was never rolled out. Was it a better browsing experience? Possibly, but that isn't the metric Amazon is optimising for so it just doesn't matter. I expect that there is a threshold where any time saved for a user searching Amazon is not spent buying more products from Amazon but spent on competitor sites.

One big false generalization. I mean Netflix's interface sucks for discovery, and the suggested improvement in the article is to force me to look at one suggested movie at a time? Seriously!?

duncanawoods 11y ago

Any claims for discovery efficiency is a lie. Shitty UX's "convert better" due in part to the way that they hurt their users. Netflix cannot let you discover there is nothing you want to watch in their entire catalogue because you will unsubscribe. They have to make you believe there is more that you have not found. Similar to Amazon, they cannot make search so efficient that you have the time and energy to search other sites or price compare. The strategy is to make sure they are the first place you visit and then exhaust you to the point you settle with what they have to offer.

computator 11y ago
> Netflix cannot let you discover... They have to make you believe there is more that you have not found. That's an insightful observation and explains perfectly why Netflix does not provide a simple straight list of all titles that you can scroll through. I'll bet that the Netflix engineers have wanted to add such an obvious feature, but someone in marketing yelled, "Don't!" If you ask the average non-techie user how many titles their Neflix subscription has, they'll be astonished to hear that it's only ~7750 in the US and even less in other countries (eg., ~4478 in Canada)[1]. Even though this information is easy to discover, it seems that most people don't bother to know. [1] http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.ca/ http://netflixcanadavsusa.blogspot.ca/
- bru_ 11y ago
  7,750 is a shockingly low number for a service like Netflix, but I guess it reflects the fact that most movies aren't really that good and you'd probably only be interested in watching a maximum of 10k titles over your lifetime, maybe 15,000 hours / 2 years of content
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  That link is really interesting. I knew that the netflix collection was much smaller than people assume, but I never thought it'd be this small. I know people with personal media servers that could easily compete with this collection (not that I'm endorsing that, just throwing it in for scale).
- prawn 11y ago
  The other thing I've noticed having recently trialled Netflix in Australia is that they seem to push TV series harder than movies. I guess if you watch a movie, you're done in a couple of hours. If you get hooked on a TV series, you might be watching episode after episode for a number of seasons.
bduerst 11y ago
I think you're confusing search intent with discovery intent. Of course Netflix isn't going to stop showing you movie options when you're trying to discover something new. If the user doesn't intentionally know what they want to watch, they need to continually see content to discover it. And Amazon search isn't terrible because of a price-hiding scheme, it's because they have a terrible UI company-wide, from the Kindle to EC2. People typically aren't browsing Amazon to discover new products - they search and move on. Are you suggesting that Amazon search should be an internet price aggregator too? It seems like you're playing the Halloween music early by saying these companies have terrible UX as a complex ploy to keep you engaged while not giving you what you want. The reality is that they have wide userbases which are fickle to UI changes, and it takes time and research to roll out anything new.
- bru_ 11y ago
  Can you explain the difference between search intent and discovery intent
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    I want some shoes, I shall filter the shoes to match my preferences. I feel like shopping, I wonder what's on sale.
- duncanawoods 11y ago
  >> And Amazon search isn't terrible because... Amazon may not be intentionally malicious. When you make decisions only on a metric like sale conversions, you will be optimising other factors you are not even aware of. Nothing necessitates that the best UX and happiest customers will be the most profitable. For example, I recall a story about Amazon trialling infinite scroll. It had positive customer feedback and users viewed more products compared to pagination. However, sale conversions dropped so obviously it was never rolled out. Was it a better browsing experience? Possibly, but that isn't the metric Amazon is optimising for so it just doesn't matter. I expect that there is a threshold where any time saved for a user searching Amazon is not spent buying more products from Amazon but spent on competitor sites.