Netflix debut the new start screen, the first redesign in 12 years

The most powerful homepage in entertainment is very different.

From next week, Netflix will present a new homepage design for television screens, the first serious revision of the company since 2013. The redesign with fewer titles, but more video and animation, should present a slim look and bring “people to press games and stay”, said the company.

The last time Netflix debut a large redesign of the homepage, the streaming service had a little more than 30 million subscribers and only started creating its own original programs. It now has more than 300 million subscribers, has published thousands of original television programs and films and made the entire entertainment industry again in his streaming image.

It is a moment when the company markets as “the new Netflix”.

On the new homepage there is a navigation bar on the top of the screen instead of being hidden on the left. It is also shown what managers call “reaction recommendations” based on the homepage on the homepage, according to which the subscriber was looking for in almost real time. (Looking for horror? There are many more horror recommendations here.) And the new TV homepage can make your new content types such as live programming more economical.

“The real goal is how we make it easier, how can we make it easier and faster for you to make a great decision?” Greg Peters, Co-Chief Executive of the company, said in an interview.

The redesign will be introduced for all subscribers in the coming weeks and months. It only applies to television screens where the audience perform most of their Netflix tour (70 percent, said the company).

The effects on the industry could be significant. In the past ten years, almost all media companies have copied Netflix’s TV homepage when they developed their own streaming services with rows of titles.

Now the gap between Netflix and the traditional entertainment industry is so large that HBO and Max executives say that they would be happy to be viewed in households as “add-on”, the Netflix is ​​already subscribed to. At the same time, Netflix is ​​closed with YouTube in a fight for streaming TV Time Supremacy in the USA. According to Nielsen, the research company, the company in Google has a fairly comfortable lead against Netflix.

Companies managers said they started to surpass the new homepage – the internal nickname, in Eclipse at the end of 2022.

Although Netflix’s homepage has been revised and updated several times in the past decade, the managers said that the company would start to hit a wall with the old design.

For the beginning, there was only the look with apparently endless rows of titles and tiles, which compared Steve Johnson, Netflix ‘Vice President of Design, with a blockbuster -video gegal. Eunice Kim, Chief Product Officer from Netflix, said: “The way the old homepage was built, you can see a kind of box art, box art, box art, box art.”

“It’s a kind of suboptimal, isn’t it?” added it.

Subscribers who impose their Netflix app have traditionally been divided into two branches: about half who know exactly what they want to see, compared to another half who has a kind of idea or at all. However, Ms. Kim said that the non -knowing group has increased in recent years.

“This only means that our product has to work even harder to present these titles for the first time,” she said.

Enter Eclipse. Although the Netflix catalog remains as large as always, fewer titles are displayed on the new homepage. However, if a subscriber hovers a title, it is expanded into a much larger picture on the screen. This picture is packed with information, including a short description and badge that “spent in the top 10” or “Oscar candidate” for 13 weeks.

After a few seconds, a preview video from the show or a film begins to play. (The company has found that after seeing a clips, people see a show or a film.) The goal, said Ms. Kim, “to get her to slow down and to notice a little more about the title than scanning.”

Eclipse will also offer subscriber recommendations based on your searches: “Something that we have really been pursuing for a few years,” said Peters.

If a subscriber is looking for family films, for example, more and more real estate will fill the start screen with family -friendly programming. On the old homepage it could take up to a day for the algorithm to catch up.

“In the same way as people talk about a Tikok, which is:” Oh, my goodness, it really seems to understand me. “

Managers believe that Eclipse will also urgently lead to live events such as a National Football League game or a big fight.

“You see the live stream and it is not just a work of art, but you see the animation, the movement, the energy of the fight, exactly when you turn on the television,” said Ms. Kim.

The competitors also seem to be striving to change their home pages. The managing director of Disney, Robert A. Iger, expressed some frustrations about the streaming home pages of his company this year. They would have to be “more dynamic” and complained that they are “quite static in nature”.

Mr. Peters said that over time he hopes that the subscribers will notice how much better the new Netflix is. And then, he introduced himself when they click from Netflix to their streaming competitors: “These other experiences feel relatively static, maybe they feel a bit old at some point and are stuck in the mud,” he said.

“You know,” he continued, “I wouldn’t be sad about this result.”