6 steps to creating your VOD

Bring high-quality films directly to your loyal film fans by creating your very own VOD area for your website — yes, in a few easy steps we can help you build an online cinema for your audience to enjoy! Presenting your very own ‘branded’ VOD platform through your website, not only strengthens your online presence and brand identity but also creates the opportunity for an additional revenue stream and encourages increased engagement from your online audience.

Here is a step by step guide to show you how to build it using the eyelet VOD area. Your VOD will consist of 3 parts that you will need to configure in the publication hub:

• Player
• The VOD area
• Films!

STEP 1 Configure your player (Optional)

You can choose between a white-label player or the eyelet player. As a default, you will have the eyelet player. If you would prefer the white label player, then you will need to configure it in the Publication Hub:

1. Go to PLAYER SET-UP.
2. Set your Default Player Size. We recommend choosing a responsive format 100% and size over 420px.
3. Set your Player Appearance: COLOURS. If you want your own colours, select My Hex Colours. The Primary colour will mostly display on the buttons & the Secondary colour will be the contrast. Primary and Secondary colours should have a contrast between them (e.g. dark grey and mint).
4. Set your Player Appearance: FONT. The font colour has to have a contrast with the secondary colour you chose for the player. If the selected secondary colour is a lighter tone, then the font colour should be black and the other way around.
5. Click Apply.
6. Choose Your Player Logo. Keep in mind that the logo will be used against a dark background.
7. Look at the player preview. Play around with it until you are satisfied with the look and feel.

STEP 2 Configure the player and VOD DNS settings

This is the tricky part of setting your VOD area up, so hang on there. We recommend looking this step over with your website technical editor or developer. Usually, this is managed by your hosting provider or your domain registrar. In order to have the player and VOD area in your website domain, we need to define CNAME records in your website DNS. These steps need to be done within 72 hours.

The first thing is to choose the URLs for your player and the VOD using your domain. Both URLs should belong to the same domain, e.g. player.yoursite.com and vod.yoursite.com. For example, if your website is https://www.cinecactus.com, your VOD can be https://vod.cinecactus.com or https://online.cinecactus.com and the player would be https://player.cinecactus.com.

Setting up the domain for your VOD area:

1. Enter your chosen URL for the VOD area and click Configure DNS.

2. Step 1: Copy-paste the CNAME values to your DNS. It will take up to 24 hours to propagate. While our team is working on that, you can move forward to configure the look and the catalogue of your VOD. You can preview the VOD area without DNS configuration.

Step 1

3.Step 2: Copy-paste the CNAME values to your DNS. Please note, it will take up to 24 hours to propagate.

Step 2

5. Congratulations, your DNS is now connected and you can use your URL to start funnelling users to your VOD area.

The process for setting up the domain for your player is the same. TO configure, go to PLAYER SET-UP.

STEP 3 Configure the look of your VOD

Yikes! That was a hard step, but let's move on to the fun part — your VOD area design!

1. Following the last step, you should still be in the MY VOD AREA.
2. Configure your Primary/Secondary colours according to your brand. The Primary colour will be used in the header, footer and buttons. The Secondary colour will be used in the header text, icons, button text and some design elements.
3. Choose a font and font colour. Font colour defines the colour of your main VOD area. If you choose a black font, your VOD area is background is white and if you choose a white font colour, the VOD area background will be black. We also have a selection of the most common fonts, but if you’d like to use your own brand font, let us know!
4. Upload your logo (consider the Primary colour because the logo needs to stand out from that) and set your mission statement (Think of why people come to your page? What makes you unique?)
5. Save that section. If you’d like, see the preview of the VOD area. You can see the preview before setting up the DNS.

STEP 4 Configure the catalogue of your VOD

Now it is time to fill your VOD with the best films to match your audience’s taste! Your VOD page will consist of three separate parts:

1. BROWSE (This is your landing page with the curated film selection for your online audience)
2. FILMS LISTS (This is the second part that includes your editorial articles for mood-related film lists, niche collection of films, guest writers film selections and film packs with special prices)
3. MY CONTENT (This is the third part that is intended for your online audience and will show their purchased films, film packs, favourites).

VOD page

Next, we will guide you on how to add content to these pages.

Films lists and packs (FILMS LISTS)

Films lists and packs are an excellent way to offer your online audience curated film lists based on mood, special events, festival selections etc. If you do not want to have a Film List page in your VOD, just leave this section blank.

You have four options to create your Film List area. To begin, click on the drop-down menu in the VOD area in the Pub Hub:

1. Automatically Fill With My Film Lists. Selecting this option means that every Film List created under MY CONTENT will be included in your VOD Film List page.
2. Automatically Fill With eyelet Film Lists. Selecting this option means that every eyelet films list will be included on your VOD Film Lists page. There are over 40 film lists that will automatically renew on your Film Lists page. ADD INFO SPANISH/ENGLISH
3. Let me choose your Film Lists. Selecting this option means that you can choose the film lists you want to include on the VOD Film Lists page created by you.
4. No Film Lists Section. Selecting this option means that you will not have a Film List page.

FILM PACKS: If you have created film packs under MY CONTENT, they will be included in the VOD area automatically.

NB! Remember to save these sections.

My Catalog page (BROWSE)

In this section, you can choose films for your VOD’s main page. These sections can be divided by genre, director, time, era etc- whatever you like! Create these sections based on the taste of your target audience. For example: “Drama”, “Festival Picks”, “20 Century film classics”, “US Auteurs” etc.

You have two options to create your main film page. To start, click “Add Section” and you will see the following drop-down options:

1. Let me name the section. Selecting this option allows you to build your own film section and name it however you wish.
2. Alternatively, you will find a list of genre options created by eyelet, such as Love, Drama, Rom-Coms etc. Here you can choose if it is automatically filled based on this genre or you can select the films yourself. Only films that you have chosed for your catalogue will be shown to your online audience.

Do not forget to save these sections.

ORDER OF THE FILM SECTION

You can choose the order of the films section on the VOD area by clicking the arrows in front of the film sections. Whichever you choose to be the first section will be highlighted on the VOD area with prominent positioning.

To move the sections, click the arrows

STEP 5 Test & Experiment

You have set up your player, configured your DNS settings and designed your own online cinema, now it is time to see how it looks and feels. And test, test, test:

1. Test if the films work. You can create screeners for the films in the pub hub.
2. See if the site runs smoothly. If not, let us know!
3. Ask yourself if your online audience will understand what they have to do. If not, then maybe they need some assistance.

test.test.test

When testing, please take into account:

• Films that you have added to your film catalogue (MY FILMS) might take a few minutes to appear in your VOD area.
• In the preview mode, the site’s performance will be slower than the real site. This is because we are constantly recreating every section to show you the latest changes.

STEP 6 Communication & Promotion

Eyelet is automatically sending 4 transactional emails to your signed-up users:

Welcome email

Free film code email

Subscription email

Pack Purchase email

The emails have a default design as seen above. You can change the logo and colours in Dripping Marketing Settings.

Your VOD should now work like a charm, now is time to plan your communication and promotion. We have created a visual guideline to get you started!