Netflix Teases ‘Beautiful’ New User Interface Intended to Help Boost Viewer Engagement
Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos were awkwardly effusive of the new UI when speaking with analysts this week.
Your Netflix homepage will soon be getting a major facelift. Back in June, the company provided its first glimpse of a massively updated user interface, which it promised would make its way to viewers sometime in 2024. This week, Netflix took the opportunity while discussing its second-quarter earnings to talk about the update a little more, including its motivations behind the overhaul and what the company hopes it will achieve.
Key Details:
- The new user interface introduces the “My Netflix” tab to more devices, enlarges box art, and moves the navigation bar to the top of the page.
- Netflix executives discussed a need to make it easier for viewers to find live content as it continues to add more live events.
- The company also wants the interface to be able to show viewers different titles based on different viewing windows.
The redesigned UI is being described by Netflix as its “biggest update in a decade.” It will move the navigation bar from the left of the screen to the top, and simplify it, giving viewers a “Home,” “Movies,” “Shows,” and “My Netflix” tab. The My Netflix feature was previously only available for mobile devices and is where users can find their recently-watched content, new recommendations, downloaded titles, and more.
“This new interface provides more visible title information at a glance — including synopsis, genre and ratings. Title previews are also larger and more dynamic, with more immersive trailers and bigger box art to make browsing easier,” Netflix said of the new UI in a shareholder letter this week. “We’ve also simplified the navigation bar and moved it to the top of the page to create quicker, easier short cuts.”
Check out a preview of the new Netflix home page.
Could a “Live” tab be coming to that navigation bar soon? It sounds possible, given comments from Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters when asked about the update during a conference call to discuss the company’s earnings report. Peters said that as the company continues to increase the number of live events it offers, it wants its interface to help viewers who want to watch that content to find it more quickly.
“It’s live events like the Brady roast, which was incredible, but these are one-off events that we have to create demand for,” Peters explained. “It’s live events like WWE, which are consistent and repeating, that we want to make sure that fans of that experience have an easy way to access those things. We’re increasingly promoting games as well into our service. So, what we found is we need to create structures that allow us to flexibly, you know, go from one type of content and entertainment to another in terms of how we’re promoting and connecting those.”
How Will Home Page Help to Drive More Engagement for Netflix?
Peters also said that they want the new interface to be able to help people find different types of titles, depending on their situation. Viewers obviously want to watch different types of content at different times, and the new UI can help anticipate those desires.
“We want to increasingly recognize that we’re doing different jobs for our users in different moments,” Peters said. “And that could be, you know, Sunday afternoon family movie time. That’d be a great experience if we want to provide exactly the right discovery and choosing experience for, versus maybe late on Thursday night when you’re coming home and you just want to get into the next episode of the series that you’re currently cruising through. So, it’s that kind of flexibility we want to provide.”
Giving customers these types of viewing experiences will continue to help them think of Netflix as the streaming service they want to spend their time with most, which helps create more loyal viewers. That increase in engagement will bring additional revenue to Netflix’s coffers, or at least that’s the plan. But Netflix’s other co-CEO Ted Sarandos made sure to point out that aesthetics are also a part of the equation.
“And less technical, too, Greg. The UI is beautiful,” Sarandos broke in during the conversation.
“There we go. We like beauty as well. Beauty is good,” Peters somewhat awkwardly replied.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.