Cinema is truly a way of life in India. More movies are made and watched by moviegoers in India than anywhere else in the world. Bollywood and its regional hubs, churn out more movies and sell more tickets than rest of the world put together.
Passion for cinema is not restricted to Indian languages and certainly not to theater goers. The DVD circuits are abuzz with demand for—not just Indian—but English and other foreign language movies. Catchflix.com online DVD rental service is seeing rapid growth in user base by tweaking the business model to Indian requirements.
Catchflix.com focuses on creating a great customer experience and significant part of that is felt on its agile website. Catchflix.com is quick to add new features based on customer feedback, making it easy for users to find movies they like. As a start-up, Catchflix.com adopted the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) technology stack to enable rapid and cost-effective website development. In addition, Catchflix.com extensively uses third-party services, platforms and components to enhance its website functionality.
Early release of Catchflix.com was commerce driven, and the website focused on core functionality that would get the business going. The roadmap included a number of sophisticated features to build rich content and community features for engaging users.
As business picked up pace, the model kept evolving to newer levels. But new requirements around the core commerce concepts and functionality put content and community features that were planned–like ratings, reviews, pictures, trailers—on the backburner.
“We were well aware of the importance having features that would win consumer mindshare and loyalty. But when it came to allocating resources, money and time, the more basics needs won,” says Ira Tondon, Director, Catchflix.
Catchflix.com also realized that to be able to successfully roll out advanced features to engage users, required a completely different skill set and technical approach than what was used for the basic website. A rapidly growing user base also meant features that were heavy on user interactions had to be designed and managed separately for scalability as well as usability.
A surge of innovation and new investments had spawned a new generation of websites that raised the bar on the whole web experience. Even simple functions and minutest of features had to be thoughtfully created. This was a challenge for new website builders, but a great opportunity to tap social networks and virtual communities and leverage user experience to accelerate business growth.
Catchflix.com found a way in Web 2.0.
What’s Web 2.0? Well, you can’t put your finger on it, but when you see website you can tell if it is Web 2.0 or not.
Catchflix.com used Pramati ShopprStream – a collection of Web 2.0 components and enabling infrastructure that lets a website owner to plug-in a gamut of features and functions with surprising ease and speed. And the widgets are so flexible in how they work and look, that each feature comes across as if it belonged to the website.
ShopprStream propelled Catchflix.com into Web 2.0– all the slick mouseover effects, silky Ajax windows, polished pop-ups–the works. Smooth, glossy and seamless widgets connected to real social networks, broadcasting on member IMs, members posting and sharing reviews.
With a vast selection of titles, diverse themes and varied personal tastes, movies are probably the ideal trade to tap power of online community. Users heavily rely on ratings and reviews to make selections, fan followings run across multiple dimensions like genres, periods, actors and directors, and being an audio-visual medium, movie stills, images posters, and trailers impact user choice.
That users are truly involved with their movies became apparent within 2 weeks of releasing the Rating Widget. Nearly 400 movies were rated and many users have not only posted reviews but also shared them by emailing friends, with buddies on chat (Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk), by posting on blogs (Wordpress, Blogger) and publishing it on social networks (Facebook, Twitter)–all from Catchflix.com directly–creating a significant buzz and branding.
By using ShopprStream, Catchflix.com has got a jumpstart on how it can use Web 2.0 concepts and technologies to quickly bring richness of content and the power of community on its website. With Pramati focus on continually enhancing and upgrading ShopprStream widgets, Catchflix.com can be constantly on the cutting-edge of superior user experience.
With ShopprStream, everyone can be Web 2.0.