There is no doubt that even a gloomy or boring evening can become interesting by watching a TV program, movie or a new trend “web series”. And thanks to the evolution of Smart TVs which can connect with the internet and hence you don’t need to continuously change channels in order to find something interesting. There are video streaming apps available on TV, mobiles, and desktops on which you can find interesting web series of almost every genre.
For example, Netflix is the most popular video streaming platform across the world. It is having thousands of programs & movies for almost every taste whether it is a thrill, comedy, humor, romance, sci-fi, etc. Netflix is a billion dollars worth platform and has introduced the world to video streaming applications. It wouldn’t be false to say that due to the major platforms like Netflix, or Amazon Prime, many small players have introduced themselves into this business which is having huge potential. So, if you are planning to build your own video streaming app then it really worth giving efforts. In this article, we will give you a complete guide of how you can create a similar app to Netflix and how much will it cost?
How does Netflix or Amazon Prime work?
Netflix and Amazon Prime are Subscription Video On Demand (SVOD) platforms. Netflix is the largest platform of this niche with a huge collection of series and movies. After paying a monthly or annual fee, the users get access to its whole content. They can watch whatever they prefer unlimited. It can work on almost every device such as smartphones, desktops, tablets, iPads, Smart TVs etc. It comes with a free trial version for one month. However, then automated subscriptions and purchases are integrated into the application.
Read more: How Long Does it Takes to Develop a Mobile Application?
Almost every day new content is added on Netflix and its features are wider than they seem ostensible.
- User can use an existing library for listing the content or integrated search
- There is a cinematic system by which you can find new shows and movies as per your preference or taste
- User can create five separate profiles by a single account
- Add search categories to your service. You can rate viewed films so the app will sort out films by your liking
By multiple profiles, your kith and kin can watch their favorite shows and movies
How to create an app like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ or HotStar?
There are 6 important steps that you need to follow for creating an app like the above-mentioned video streaming apps. These are:
1st Step: Properly following the correct strategy to initiate Netflix-like app development
2nd Step: Creation of a feasible business model
3rd Step: Use tech stack to create an app
4th Step: Building MVP features as the core of your app
5th Step: Consider all important features & functionalities to implement6th Step: Updating the useful hints for improving the app and make it successful
We will follow each of these steps to develop a success video-streaming application.
Don’t want to read? Contact our sales team directly.
Right Strategy to Follow
There are five steps that you need to follow for making a proper strategy of your app.
Find your niche
Hurry can become worried, so you don’t need to include every show happening on this planet on your app. You just have to introspect yourself and delve what area of content you want to provide on your video-streaming application. For e.g. do you want to create an app for kids where they can watch cartoons, anime, or other kids content, or provide mature content for 18+ people?
It is important that you must be clear about your niche right from the beginning.
Content Building
While developing a video streaming app, you need to decide what your content would be. The content will decide the success of your app so it should be attractive to the users.
Hence, you have to decide how often you will update the content i.e. daily, weekly or monthly. You will give the complete package at once or one by one episode. Would it be a trial version on the app or you want to give a few episodes free but then user need to subscribe?
These are a few of the important questions of which you must have answers.
Obtain a license for your content
There are always some measures or laws that you need to follow while providing content to your audience for which you have to obtain a license. There are two ways to this:
- Get content for the producer or distributor who is already authorized of that content.
- Contact the copyright holder directly.
Both of these options are feasible. Regarding expenses, there are huge investments involved in Netflix of content licensing. For e.g., as per Investopedia Netflix spent a whopping amount of $13 billion in 2018 in getting licenses and production. However, the investment was fruitful as per Netflix investors as they made $16 billion in 2018.
Design of your app
The design of your app should be highly captivating to attract users. There are two different methods to choose the design of your app:
- Find a ready-made template just like Netflix or any other video-streaming app and then hire a mobile application development company to implement it for your app.
- Create the design of your app from scratch. The UI/UX designer will implement the same design with your choice of colours and tones to build the theme of your app.
Both the ways are good but a better choice is the second one as it will incorporate uniqueness in your video-streaming app. You can take some tips from other apps as well.
Consider all mediums:
A user doesn’t want to only watch his favorite movie or web show on the small screen of mobile but also on desktop or large screens of TVs.
Henceforth, you also need to develop a website and provide content on the website too.
Know your audience
You also need to know your potential audience. There are a few simple ways of that.
- Use social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter for promoting your app.
- Leverage YouTube for your brand advertising.
- Send a newsletter to the visitors of your site or send push notification to the app downloaders.
Find feasible Business Model
You can’t expect that after creating a video-streaming app you will reach the zenith of success within a few weeks. Netflix is almost 20 years old and now it is on the cloud nine of success. Therefore, if you want to give competition to Netflix then first you have to establish in the market then you can think of this, and it can take years. In the beginning, you just have to focus on the quality of the content.
Monetization
You can make money by video streaming app by the subscription model. You can implement a monthly, quarterly or annual fees. But nobody likes to pay without trying services henceforth you must provide a trial version for a month or a few weeks. You can also provide the initial episodes or a series to watch for free and then user need to pay.
Here’s what you need to implement:
- Different plans of subscription
- Automated renewal of membership free trial version
- Auto-upgrading/discounts
- Advertising
You can also implement multiple payment methods for easiness of payments made by the user.
Know more: How the Subscription Model is ruling the Mobile Apps Industry?
Lifetime Value of Customers
For a few weeks or months after the launch of your app, you need to spend hefty money for acquiring customers. But before losing money, you need to analyze the lifetime value of your customers. If they are for short-term then you can’t make a profit.
Maximize the Lifetime Value of Customers:
It is certain that more the number of active users more would be the chances to make revenue from them for a longer period. Hence to retain the customers for a longer time, you can provide them personalized experiences, analyze their behaviour and take better business decisions.
Marketing
Advertising and marketing are definitely required to make visible your business to customers. But while marketing you should have a complete business plan of how you will acquire customers through different sales channels. A good marketing strategy, when implemented properly, is a key factor for success and profit.
Technology Stack of your Video-streaming App
While developing an app, you also need to decide on which technology you want to develop your video streaming app. Here is the technology stack of Netflix that you can implement….
| Web | NodeJS or C# |
| Mobile | Kotlin for Android, Swift for iOS |
| TV | LG TV: C#, React; Samsung TV: Node.js, React |
| Content-Type | Content Streaming |
| Best-fitting Tech | AWS |
| AWS Cost | From $0,0850 per GB |
| Wowza | From $0,095 per GB |
Building MVP features as the core of your app
Developing an MVP of your app at the initial level is highly important. An MVP is a procedure in which initially the mobile app comes with essential features which are required to go live, and find out whether the user wants an updated and more sophisticated version of this app with additional features. Developing a video streaming app is expensive henceforth for the beginning, it is best to add only required features for reducing the cost and then add advanced features gradually when it starts getting popularity.
Do you require consultation of how much does MVP Cost, contact our sales team.
There are no huge differences while mobile app development for iOS or Android platform. However, for developing an MVP you should focus only on one platform. But later on, when your app starts gaining popularity you should develop it on both platforms as there is a huge presence of both iOS and Android. Apart from these platforms, you also have to a web application for your video-streaming service too.
Design of your app
People don’t use apps which are hard to use. Hence, you must implement a captivating design yet easy UX. It will allow the users to get what they want in a few taps on the screen.
Sign-Up or log in: User-onboarding is the first step. The registration should be simple with the only necessary information of the user. You can also implement login through social media networks.
Payment Gateway: The payment should be highly secure and easy for the user. You must include a payment gateway that gives multiple ways of making payment for the user such as debit/credit cards, UPI, Net banking, digital wallets, etc. The payment should be compliant with PCI-DSS. Some of the major payment gateways are Paypal, Braintree, and Stripe.
Profile Creation: The user should be able to set up which involves the selection of genre, location, language etc. in which they want to watch content.
Smart Search: Smart search plays an important role. The search can do autocorrect, and understand through AI what users want to search. It must provide suggestions by understanding the taste of users.
Push Notifications: Push notifications are necessary to give your users new updates, what new content has arrived, offers and discounts etc. It is helpful in engaging your content.
Settings: The user can set the audio language, subtitle language, play/pause, equalizer etc.
Multi-lingual: To make your service available across different nations you need to implement more languages.
Blocking of Screenshots or Video Recording: To protect your content from piracy you must block the screenshot and video recording of your app. Currently, this feature is only available in Android OS.
Admin Panel: An admin panel is required from where you can manage the content and all settings, and configurations of your app.
Advanced Features you can include:
The above-mentioned features were required while developing an MVP of your app. If your app starts getting popular then you can also include advanced features such as:
1. Social Sign-in: The user would be able to get feeds on his social media channels.
2. Reviews and Ratings: After watching a series, the user must be able to give reviews and ratings to the content.
3. Live Streaming: You can also include live streaming of big events such as live premier, game tournaments etc.
4. Content Recommendations: There is a Cinematch system in the Netflix app by which users get content as per their taste. You should also integrate something similar to your app.
5. Offline Download: This is highly required feature in a video-streaming app. The users should be able to download the content so that they can watch it when the internet is not available.
6. Adjusting video quality: The user should be able to adjust the quality of the video. You can also include Auto feature by which the content will stream as per internet connection.
Crucial Things to Remember while developing a Video-streaming application
Video-streaming application development is not a cup of tea for every mobile application development company. The content should deliver seamlessly to the user with the best quality and in minimum hardware requirements from the user. Here are some of the key points you need to remember:
Stable Storage: Cloud hosting and infrastructure is considered best for keeping your data. It is fast and highly reliable. You can provide a smooth streaming experience to the users through the cloud.
Strong network connection: Implement Content Delivery Network (CDN) for reliable connectivity and preventing the server from getting overload. The users will also get shorter load times through it.
High Bandwidth: High bandwidth with a good CDN is a perfect solution to deliver high-quality content without any lagging. If you are planning to include content in 4k then you must require high-bandwidth for it.
Security: The application should be secure from the attack of hackers. Include SSL encryption, token security, domain restriction, etc.
Video Streaming Protocols: You also need to choose between different video streaming protocols such as WebRTC, HLS, RTMP, and others. Each one of them has its own pros and cons. Our team of developers will tell you which protocol would be best for your service.
Other Important Points to consider
- User experience: UX means how a user can quickly, and easily understand the flow of your app, its every functionality, and start using it seamlessly. It should be smooth and personalized.
- Ad Strategy: Ad should be displayed so that the user doesn’t get frustrated.
- Analytics: You can improve user retention and user acquisition by analytics.
- QoS: Quality of service is related to many different components such as UX, speed, data downloading, quality, ads, playback. All these points should be highly optimized.
How much time does it take to develop a video-streaming application?
Here is the average development time to develop a video streaming app:
| UI/UX Design | Approx. 140 hours |
| iOS Development | Approx. 900 hours |
| Android Development | Approx. 950 hours |
| Backend Development | Approx. 800 hrs |
| Frontend Development | Approx. 600 hrs |
The hours can vary as per the features and design of your app.
Why hire us?
Amplework is a best-rated mobile app development with a vast experience in developing on-demand video streaming applications. Our mobile development experts are having a niche in every technology and development cycle. You can visit our portfolio page to know about our experience. We believe in developing extra-ordinary and out-of-the-box which gives you a unique stand.
