Unlisted Team Channels

Driving bottom-up growth through a freemium user experience


Overview

SportsEngine Play is a Youth & Recreational sports streaming app. YRS teams on SportsEngine can live stream their games and tournaments to the platform without having to worry about trust or safety issues.

Initially, SportsEngine Play Creator (the application used to capture livestreams and upload game film) was only available to use by organization admins that worked with our sales team to set up an official team channel. 

This meant that we were not tapping into a large potential customer base of parents, already using SportsEngine HQ and SE Mobile, who had heard about SportsEngine Play and wanted to try livestreaming their kids’ games.


The Opportunity

We believed that by allowing parents to bypass sales and try livestreaming for free, we could foster discovery of the SportsEngine Play ecosystem.

User Insights

As my team and I ideated on the experience, we kept circling back to a few unanswered questions. I collaborated with business stakeholders, my product team, and UXR to gather key insights about parents and fans.

1. Parents want to test out live streaming, but are anxious about doing it wrong
2. Parents want to stream a game, and want to be able to control who sees it
3. Parents want to stream a game, but don’t feel that they have the authority to “claim” a team

3. Create a Team Channel and Start Streaming

The first step in the onboarding flow is to create a new team channel.

Our goal was to make the user feel comfortable with creating a team channel: the app autofills the text field to “[User Name]’s First Team” which the user can keep or edit. We also added a message to say that by default, this channel is unlisted.

In order to get the user through the flow and streaming as fast as possible, we only require a team channel name. Other data that a listed team usually requires (Gender, level, sport, team logo) can be added later.

4. Invite others to your channel

The next step in onboarding encourages parents to invite others to follow the team channel, which they can skip if they want to.

5. Try a test stream

The last step offers parents the opportunity to try out a test stream. We want the user to get as comfortable with using the product as possible, without the pressure of anyone seeing it.

1. Words of encouragement

After a parent is finished streaming, we want him to feel confident enough to share his stream with others.

Our hypothesis is that the social reward of having people view his stream, as well as the ease of streaming, will encourage him to create more livestreams and invite more followers.


2. Invite More Streamers

After the third successful livestream, we offer Tom the opportunity to add other streamers to his channel. We think that growing the network of contributors will only help grow the network of viewers.

Encourage users to list their channel 

With this brand new “unlisted” channel status, our goal was to be as clear as possible as to what unlisted means, and give free users the opportunity to talk to sales and officially list their channel through natural touchpoints.

Customer Feedback
& Fast Follows

Within two two-week sprints, we released unlisted teams, gathered customer feedback, and shipped some fast follows.

Our customer feedback revealed one major gap– when we built the feature, we were only considering two personas.


Persona 1: The official team streamer

SSO recognizes that he already has been assigned his role on a team. He bypasses the entire freemium onboarding experience and can go straight to streaming without having to create a new channel.

Persona 2: The brand new user

This person is not on any team yet, and is simply testing out the app to see if he likes it. Nothing official, no commitment. We designed unlisted teams to make this person feel as comfortable as possible trying out the streaming app.


Missing Persona: the “Middle” man

Customer feedback revealed that there was a persona who falls in the middle of the first two. This person is rostered to an official team, but does not have the official role of “streamer.” Maybe he’s a parent sitting in the stands, and the team admin asks if he wants to live stream the game. This parent downloads the app while waiting for the team admin to invite him as a streamer. He doesn’t want to create a new team, and our system has not found him assigned to a streaming role on the team yet.

Fast follow: The waiting room

• Allow users to skip the entire onboarding process
• Go straight to a “waiting room” until their team admin assigns them a streamer role
• Once new role is found, user has streaming access for his team

Unlisted Teams Impact

Easing the minds of apprehensive customers

Unlisted Teams became an effective way for sales to encourage customers who are apprehensive about getting an org-level account, allowing potential customers to get into the product and try things out for free.

We also helped solve a real pain point for parents of athletes who want to live stream a game for friends and loved ones who can’t be there, without having to claim an official role on the team.


Contributing to KPIs

The business had a goal of reaching 300 livestreams per day, and allowing users to bypass sales, create unlisted team channels, film live streams and share with others became critical to reaching it.