Saving Time and Styles One At a Time
— creating on brand videos with the magic of one tap
— length & type
5 months
Product Design
Mobile Design
— role
Mobile Product Designer
— team
1 Product Manager, 1 Web Product Designer, 2 iOS Engineers, 2 Full Stack Engineers, 1 VP of Marketing
— context
After a redesign of the Animoto legacy video editor in the second quarter of 2020, Animoto users still found the product to be quite limiting. Very small business (VSB) users, such as solopreneurs, encountered a very steep learning curve to making videos in general and sought Animoto to expedite the process. However, with the limited editing tools, they still found the video creation process very time-consuming. This presented an obstacle in creating professional, good-looking videos for their business while on a tight budget and various deadlines.
— problem to solve
Very small and small business users want to get noticed by their customers with video. However, without formal video training, these types of users counted with very limited time and resources to propel their business success forward with professional-looking videos.
Through this effort, we sought to create new value in the Animoto experience through well-defined subscription plans that more users were willing to pay for through tailored solutions that addressed their immediate video needs.
— customer insights
"Today, I have to duplicate the video blocks several times so all the colors, company logo and font look consistent and on brand. It takes a lot of time and I am a 1 person team. I don't have the budget to spend without an ensured value add."
Animoto users found themselves repeating the same task over and over in their editing flow. They were consistently applying the same color or logo and struggling to maintain visual consistency throughout their video. This resulted in subpar videos that did not meet the quality users were expecting for the required level of effort thus yielding low conversion rates into paying users.
How might we save time on video creation?
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As an Animoto user, I want to quickly make on-brand videos.
Save time with saved brands and make visually consistent videos with the magic of one tap
— concept
By uploading their brand’s logo, preferred font, and selecting primary and secondary colors, users will be able to apply a consistent look to every video project with just one tap powered by cinematic AI technologies.
While this one-tap brand application is a huge time saver for small business owners and marketing professionals, it’s also a safety net to prevent inaccuracies in their branding, helping users to establish brand awareness, recognition, and trust.
In Detail
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Demo Video
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Concept Development
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— process
As we set out to deliver a magical experience for users, we had multiple challenges to consider in order to balance ease of use and editing control. In order to match the technical structure of Animoto's editor of video styles themes, we set out to define what consisted a brand for users, where do we collect it and what smart logic do we use to apply it.
We released a beta where users could save 1 brand to collect information on user expectations and gauge the perceived value of the feature.
— learnings + outcomes
The beta release gave us a breadth of insights into what steps to take next. While the logo and color application resonated positively with users, they indicated they still wanted some control over the magic application of the brand. We iterated a new solution to allow users to select a brand inside the workspace so its elements would appear as options in all controls of the editor. They would be able to toggle the logo watermark on and off and play with different combinations of their brand colors. Additionally, we included a prompt to save the brand after users finalized a video project.
This project along with the addition of premium stock formed the new value users were looking for packaged in a new subscription tier in the Animoto business model, Professional Plus (Pro+). The MVP gave acces to save one brand for Professional plan users and save multiple brands for Pro+ plan users. The project surpassed the business user engagement goal by 34%. Among active Pro+ users, 36.8% engaged with saved brands indicating saved brands held genuine value for our users. The launch of Pro+ plan yielded a 193% y/y revenue increase, over $205K within 5 months of launch, surpassing the revenue goal by 20%.
— iterations + reflections
As we looked into the future, we explored solutions to scale the elements encompassed inside saved brands beyond color, logo and font into saved layouts, themes, video styles and more. We considered creating shuffle functionalities to give users more control on the color application and make their video outputs more dynamic.
While applying in one click was the first, we asked ourselves how could we automate the process of creating a brand and defining its elements further to smartly save time?
— Given the nature of this project, further insights, research sources and design process can only be revealed in an interview setting.
