BrowserHawk Helps Movielink Deliver an Exceptional Web Experience

Leading broadband movie download service relies on BrowserHawk to ensure the best customer experience

Movielink is the leading web-based movie download service, offering U.S. customers an extensive selection of new and classic hit movies, television shows and foreign films. Customers purchase or rent movies using the Movielink web site, and then immediately download the content directly to their computer. The company is a joint venture of the 5 major movie studios in Hollywood, including Paramount Pictures, MGM, Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers Entertainment.
To help protect its video content, Movielink uses digital rights management software from Microsoft and Real Networks. While this approach helps mitigate unauthorized content reproduction, it requires their users to meet certain minimum system requirements in order to use its service. For instance, users must have Internet Explorer 5.0 or later, a broadband connection, a current Adobe Flash plug-in, an updated Windows Media Player or Real Player, and have cookies and JavaScript enabled in their browsers. Movielink realized at the outset, however, that a portion of the visitors to the Movielink web site did not meet these minimum requirements. It was very challenging and time consuming to help visitors determine which system requirements they lacked and to explain how to resolve the issue.
To ensure that Movielink consistently delivered an exceptional web experience to every visitor, the company needed a way to automatically detect the browser capabilities and system settings of its visitors. After a thorough make vs. buy analysis, Movielink selected BrowserHawk as the cost-effective, prudent choice for its needs. “Since the number of web browsers and varying system configurations in use are so vast, it became clear that attempting to do this in-house would prove too costly and time consuming. We turned to BrowserHawk as our browser and system analysis tool of choice and haven’t looked back,” said Michael Hayes, senior director of engineering. BrowserHawk is the industry standard solution and the world’s largest selling Intelligent Browser and System Analysis tool. Now, when visitors enter the Movielink web site, BrowserHawk pre-screens each visitor to ensure they meet the web site’s requirements. Visitors who do not satisfy all of the system requirements are immediately presented with detailed information on what requirements they failed to meet and how to upgrade their systems. “We didn’t want people to spend time on the Movielink web site picking out and purchasing a movie, only to later discover that they couldn’t download or view it properly,” said Hayes. “Instead, we let people know up-front when their system is not compatible with our offerings and what they can do about it. This earns their trust, and with trust comes happy, loyal customers.”
BrowserHawk helps Movielink deliver a consistent, flawless web experience that works without any unpleasant surprises. “With BrowserHawk, we’ve been able to build repeat business because of the pleasant experience visitors have on our web site,” Hayes said. In addition, BrowserHawk helps Movielink control its support costs and earned the company a reputation for its fast and efficient customer service. “Without BrowserHawk we’d have complex support issues taking up a great deal of our time,” he added. “BrowserHawk makes supporting our customers so easy. It’s fast, completely reliable, and integrates seamlessly into our web site.” BrowserHawk also helps Movielink stay ahead of the competition. “In our highly competitive industry, it’s critical to innovate and innovate often,” said Bruce Anderson, senior vice president, web engineering & operations. “BrowserHawk enables us to focus on the movie business and spend more time developing new and exciting offerings, rather than being bogged down in browser detection and related issues.”
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