Vimeo Mobile Apps

How do you change an app in mid-flight?

In 2018, as Vimeo pivoted away from being a content destination and towards a purely SaaS business model, our mobile strategy remained an open question. Our apps had been designed and positioned to solve a content consumption use case. We considered a new suit of apps, but that came with complications, and on balance we deemed it unnecessary. We already had a massive install base across the users we were trying to reach, and the few tools we’d made available had high levels of engagement. The challenge became to preserve what worked while finding new ways to add the features we knew mattered.

Step 1: Rethink the Architecture

With a broad goal in mind, we planned a series of iterative releases, each one a step towards an app that would provide a rich, fully featured experience for creators. Some sections, like the upload flow, would need a major overhaul. Others, like the video page, would only need small tweaks to make sense in our new paradigm.

Step 2: Real change begins at home

In earlier versions of the app, this crucial screen had been conceived very much as a social feed of other people’s content (think Youtube or Instagram). We wanted to preserve content consumption as a valid use-case while at the same time re-imagining this prime real estate to act as a dashboard for a creators content all across the stages of their workflow. Consequently, for the first time private folders appeared in the app, as did Vimeo’s bulk distribution product, Showcase.

Step 3: Build Value

With the fundamentals in place we had a platform that enabled us to begin plugging in the features we knew made the most sense. We expanded our creation and capture feature set dramatically by building record, live streaming and clip trimming functionality. We bought true workflow to the mobile apps by incorporating our private collaboration features. We also made sure we could keep bringing our creators active and engaged by incorporating stats and analytics into the app.

Step 4: Reap the rewards

With all this in place we felt confident enough to experiment with a mobile-only purchase funnel. We felt we’d built enough stand-alone functionality that we could capture mobile-centric users using Apple and Google’s native In-App purchasing. The upshot of this was an entirely new acquisition funnel for Vimeo’s SaaS business.