Promo.com App
Promo Video Maker is a marketing video creation app on your mobile phone. Choose a video template, add footage and music, customize eye-catching text styles and you’re ready to promote your business.
Defining the Problem
After the success of the Promo web editor and some of the insights we've got working on it, we came up with the hypothesis that making videos on tablets and phones should be fast, fun and easy so we framed our questions as how might we help our users to create video ads on their mobile devices using the real-time preview technology to simplify the user flow.
We were researching fundamental problems and oppotunities around how to transfer the web experience into mobile in an easier-to-use and elegant way emphasising the benefits of mobile platforms. I led the design of both iOS and Android apps from the ground up which is always super exciting and challenging.
Feed and Video Search
Think about what it’s like to open a feed with plenty of professionally designed video templates for every national holiday, marketing event, and online trend on your phone and start editing it right away.
Well, that’s already half the battle for the user struggling how to make a video for their business. I decided to show templates almost edge-to-edge and let the content shine to present people how the potential ads might look like on the phone screen.
Editing the Video Template
We had a huge technological benefit over the desktop app - real-time preview which dramatically simplified the user flow however complicating the development process.
The web app data gave me a deeper understanding of what the hierarchy should be: preview, animated text styles, timeline, internal tab bar and clear call-to-action button to wrap up the final video.
Optimizing videos with designed outros including logo, business details, and strong marketing calls-to-action perhaps is the most useful feature for the promotional results.
Music Search and Filters
If you want to create a video that truly makes an impact, you should never neglect background music. Therefore the tab bar was designed to contain Video and Music tabs close to the thumb for quick navigation and leaving a space for a few major features in future.
I designed the Music tab as a carousel view so the user can quickly access the top-rated soundtracks first and then switch to the full page library of pre-edited professionally curated music if not satisfied.
We let users save time searching tracks by mood, tempo, genre, and instrumentation and giving a functionality of uploading personal music or voiceover to get better results.
Publishing and Sharing Your Video
Tapping on “Publish” button navigates you to processing the final video which takes a while. In order to engage the user and eliminate boring progress bars, we came up with the idea of previewing the final video as well as showing helpful video making tips every 5 seconds.
Once the video is crafted all you have to do is easily share it on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social networks, websites or blogs. First published video comes for free.
Product Video (motion design by Itamar Leopold)
Learnings and Retrospect
During many months we were working on this project, we went from a Tinder-like video suggestion feed to a multiple channel-based experience with a powerful but still convenient Editor which customers willingly started to use on a regular basis.
Despite the close collaboration between design, development and the client, there might have been more straightforward conversations and critical feedback on earlier stages when defining the MVP. Our desperate feeling of outrunning the desktop app blinded us early, which followed some product development delays which could have been avoided.
At the end of the day most importantly, creating an app that stimulates small businesses to create video ads on mobile devices has been the highest reward of all. As well as seeing people use professionally looking videos to boost social engagement and promote their products has been nothing but inspiring.
I’d love to build something great with you, say hi.