Eating Our Own Dog Food

The phrase to eat one’s own dog food may have originated with Microsoft, but it has entered the popular lexicon because it rings true to so many people. If you want others to believe in your product, you must be an enthusiastic consumer yourself – even if your product is dog food.

Here at EyeView we recently undertook a critical re-examination of the video on our homepage. We stopped being a provider for a few minutes and instead became our own customer. We already had a video in place that was working. The conversion goal for the page was to have visitors submit their details in on our Contact Us page in order to generate new leads for the business.

We looked at a number of different elements that we felt should be tightened up to see if they would have an impact on our conversion and then we tested them.

First of all we looked at the messaging in the video. We went through our internal messaging policy and made sure that the script of the new video was fully aligned.

Part of the conversion funnel was to drive traffic to the Contact Us page. We were concerned that not enough people were visiting the Contact Us page after watching the video. We decided to make the call to action much more explicit in the video based on the principle of “See it. Hear it. Click it.” We moved the call to action button inside the player and made it clickable. We also had the narrator clearly invite visitors to push the button to drive home its importance. We made sure that this button matched the existing call to action button outside the player to avoid confusion.

To make sure we made the biggest impact on new visitors we set the video to play automatically. But this only happens the first time you visit. If you are a returning visitor the video player waits to be prompted before relaunching the video.

To see the new video in its natural habitat, visit EyeView's homepage here.

In summary, we proposed a number of changes and then we went out and tested those changes, measuring their impact against the old video. The improvement was felt immediately. These carefully considered tweaks boosted our conversion rate by over 46%. A resounding success, by any standard, but it doesn’t make us complacent.

We are already planning the next round of tests including an off-player call to action button that is synched up with the video to draw attention to it at exactly the right time.

As long as we continue suggesting changes, we will continue testing them. We’re hungry for conversion success and we’re fortunate that we make the most delicious kind of dog food.