We’re really excited to launch the newest Video
Marketing Quiz with all new questions.
Following the success
of the last quiz, we wanted to top ourselves and present some of the data
generated by the tests we run in the most engaging way we could imagine.
Since the last quiz we have seen the format picked up and imitated
by Omniture/Adobe, which just makes us think that we created an exciting
product.
To mark this launch we are giving away hundred of dollars in
Amazon vouchers to the people who take the quiz and the Tweet their results.
Every hour for the first eight hours after the launch today
at 10 am ET, five lucky tweeters will be selected and sent $20 to spend any way
they wish.
First of all I want to thank Nalts and his excellent blog for bringing this video to my
attention. It’s another epic mini-movie from OK Go that showcases the band’s
innovative use of short-form video to market themselves and their music.
It’s very entertaining. It’s also fairly useless.
Let’s take a look at their last huge viral success. The video for Here It Goes Again
rode the first wave of YouTube’s explosion into global consciousness. You’ve
seen it. Four indie nerds doing a synchronized routine on treadmills. It’s very
entertaining. According to YouTube’s figures it has been viewed almost 50
million times. That’s just from OK Go’s own channel. The same video on EMI’s
channel has added another 1.5 million and there are probably a few hundred
thousand more views with other unauthorized duplicates.
So the band have produced a video that’s been seen around 50
million times. What did they do with that? Not very much. There seems to have
been very little strategy behind the whole thing. If you watch the video on YouTube
there are no live links allowing you to purchase either the video itself or
anything else by the band. The video serves no purpose other than to entertain.
Even if you were to ascribe every purchase of the song’s parent album Oh No to a viewing of the video,
you would still end up with a dreadful conversion rate. Fifty million videos
viewed has translated, to date, into less than 250,000 albums sold. That’s an
embarrassing conversion rate of less than half a percent.
It makes me want to scream. If only their YouTube page was
linked to iTunes. If only there was a link to purchase a video ringtone of the
video for ten cents. If only the page was designed to drive 50 million viewers
towards some kind of action. Any kind of action. If only 99.5 percent of those
views weren’t totally wasted.
Damian Kulash, lead singer with OK Go sees it differently.
He believes that the video’s huge viral success helped the band to sell out
concerts on five continents and win a Grammy. I don’t doubt any of that, I just
wish he’d tried the video ringtone idea as well (and cut me in for a
percentage).
Which brings us back to now. This new video from OK is very
entertaining. Before it even went live on YouTube, Kulash was complaining in
the New York
Times, no less, about his record company’s refusal to allow video
embedding. Kulash was concerned that without the possibility of his video going
viral, the band would be unlikely to replicate the success they have achieved.
Fortunately for us, EMI caved in and we can now embed the video.
In the two
days since it launched, it has been viewed almost 2.5 million times. The video
page still carries no advertising or identifiable call to action. Sales of the new album
are, as yet, unknown.
I think the video is very entertaining. It still makes me
want to scream.
People are always asking me what (and who) I read to keep up
professionally, so I thought it was time for a post highlighting some of the
most useful sources of information I turn to regularly to keep me up to day
with the world.
Due to the nature of our EyeView’s business I find my blog
reading time split evenly between content that is focused on conversion and
optimization and commentary on the latest developments in online video and
video advertising. So will split this post into two and deal with each area
separately
So here is a list of the top 5 go-to reads for conversion
and optimization. For each I’ll list a URL and Twitter ID where appropriate.
The best introduction you can have to the world of
conversion is Bryan Eisenberg. Eisenberg is published all over the place, but
is blogging regularly now at BryanEisenberg.com.
There is very little in the world of optimization that Bryan hasn’t already
written about, but you can be sure he always finds a fresh topic for his meaty
posts. In addition to his work online, Bryan has co-authored two of the most
informative books I have ever referred to – Always
Be Testing and Waiting
For Your Cat To Bark? Bryan tweets as @TheGrok.
The guys at Conversion Rate Experts
don’t blog as regularly as I would like them to, but when they do, you can bet
they have something weighty to say. With offices in London and New York, this
team of conversion consultants have built their reputation on making a
difference for some high-profile customers. They are definitely worth listening
to.
Brian Massey has cleverly dubbed himself The Conversion Scientist.
It’s a great title, but it wouldn’t be worth anything if he didn’t back it up
regularly with some real science. You can follow Brian on Twitter where he is @bmassey.
Raquel Hirsch
and Chris Goward at Wider Funnel
put out consistently great material that always offers food for thought and
usually a practical way to apply that thought. Chris publishes a daily
conversion optimization tip on Twitter as @chrisgoward and Raquel moderates a
number of conversion optimization groups on LinkedIn.
My last entry for now is a bit of a cheat. SEOmoz doesn’t focus too hard on conversion
optimization, but the sheer breadth and volume of quality content that is
posted there means that they are host to some of the best
and most informative discussions on the subject. You can follow the SEOmoz
twitter stream here and pick through
the SEO stuff for some conversion optimization gems.
As we come to the end of an amazing year, it’s great to look
back and reflect on the changes we’ve seen. The year 2009 will be remembered as
a breakout year for online video as it left the confines of video sharing sites
and crossed over into mainstream acceptance. In 2010 every commercial site will
include a video presentation at some point in its interaction with potential
customers.
The final sign of acceptance will be when video is made accountable
not just as a ‘nice to have’ marketing extra, but as a fully functioning tool
in the marketer's arsenal with its own ROI and the expectation of revenue
generation.
EyeView is proud to be leading the charge towards accountable
video with our award-winning optimization program and our fantastic roster of
clients.
Thank you to everyone for making 2009 so exciting and let’s
see if we can’t do it all again in 2010!
There seems
to be some debate about who said it first, but whether it was Oscar Wilde or
George Bernard Shaw the quip still holds true that England and America are “two
countries separated by a common language.”
But even
when the language is the same, the accent used to express it can vary widely,
and our response to that variation may impact our willingness to listen to the
message being delivered.
We have long been interested
in testing the impact of different accents. We usually do not change the content
of a video for British or American audiences, but the accent in the voiceover
is a different matter entirely.
Ginger
Software markets a product aimed at improving your written English. It identifies
spelling and grammar errors and is particularly useful for students, people
with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, and business people for whom English
is a second language. Once we had proven that the inclusion of video on Ginger’s
site increased their conversion rate, we decided to test whether there was a
difference in conversion when the audience heard an American or a British
accent delivering the voiceover. Given that the product is tied so closely to
people’s perception of correct English, we thought this would be real grudge
match between two great nations. And the results didn’t disappoint.
We ran an
A/B test where 50% of the global audience saw the video with a
voiceover in a British accent and 50% saw it with the voiceover performed with an American accent. The conversion goal for each version of the video was to get
visitors to download Ginger’s software.
Looking at
the global population, we saw that the British voiceover was 4% more effective
at converting visitors into downloaders. On its own, that would be interesting enough,
but we wanted to look further into what was happening in each country.
It seems
that the often-heard comment by Americans that things sound smarter with a
British accent actually translates into action. For US audiences, the
conversion rate for the British accent was 5.5% higher than the American one – above the global average. In Canada, the British accent still outperformed
the American, but by a mere 1.5%.
Irish
viewers watching the British version converted 12% more often than those
hearing an American voice while the response of the Australians was even more
extreme. Viewers “down under” converted 32% more often when pitched with Pommie
tones than with an American twang.
The Brits
didn’t have it all their own way. In India, the American accent was 12% more
effective at converting visitors. But the most surprising statistic of all came
when we looked at the comparative performance of the two accents in the UK. For
audiences watching the video in the UK, the voiceover with the American accent
was 8% more effective at making visitors download Ginger’s software than the
British accent, representing a significant swing away from the global trend. This was a wonderfully counter-intuitive response to the test that really drives home the importance of knowing your
audience and optimizing your video geographically to ensure you get the best
results.
There is
nothing to say that the results obtained here would be replicated for other
videos on other sites, but there is no denying the value of testing to ensure
you get the maximum revenue from your traffic wherever it comes from.
We went back
to one of our most successful optimization projects to see if we could further
improve on the high standards we had already set.
Previously
we had embedded a landing page video for TutorVista and experienced tremendous
success. With clear confirmation that the video was key to boosting their conversion
we decided to experiment further. When we have a clear champion like with that
first test which increased conversion by over 80%, we test new alternatives in
the hope that we can squeeze even higher conversion rates from the incoming
traffic.
This time we
tested a graphic element that was part of the call to action at the end of the
video. The video was embedded next to a call to action button that said Subscribe
in the panel to the right. In the first version (below on the left) we finished
the video with a giant arrow on the player pointing towards the Subscribe
button to reinforce the closing words of the video’s voiceover.
The
competing version of the video went one stage further with a dynamic arrow
shooting out of the confines of the video player and coming to rest right next
to the Subscribe button (below on the right). The idea was to drag the viewers’
eyes as close as possible to the conversion goal for the page.
Whenever we
run a new test for a site we always try to predict which way the test will go,
but this one surprised us all. The arrow on the left that stayed within the
player and gently insisted on directing attention to the Subscribe button
converted at a significantly higher rate than the dynamic flying arrow that
left the player.
There may be
more tests to run for this kind of element that gleefully breaks the fourth
wall of online video, but for now the “old school” version remains on top.
Anyone with
a school-aged child has wrestled with the problem of tutoring. Whether your son
needs help with his trigonometry homework or your daughter needs to stop
falling behind with her reading comprehension you will discover that finding a
tutor can be as difficult as it is expensive. Whether you have to travel to the
tutor’s residence or find a mutually agreeable time in your own home, you can
expect to pay anywhere from $30-75 per hour of one-on-one tutoring.
It was only
a matter of time until someone came up with a better solution. TutorVista
operates out of Bangalore, India with a team of highly qualified professional
tutors available round the clock to work with your children improving their
academic skills. As long as you have a broadband connection, you can get unlimited
tutoring for under $100 per month.
The guys at
TutorVista approached us with a problem. They had a landing page that was
specifically designed to funnel traffic through their sign-up process. The
landing page was already reasonably successful by most standards but they
wanted to try and increase conversion for that page to make sure they were
getting the most out of their traffic.
A conversion
solution was prepared which included a battery of tests to be performed on the
landing page to measure optimization around a video which we created
specifically for the page. The first test embedded the video on the page for
half the visitors and tested it against the existing page and the existing
conversion rate. On top of that, we made the embedded video autoplay for first-time
visitors, reasoning that the information in the video was useful enough to
overcome the issues that sometimes arise from autoplay.
Arun Kumar,
Manager at TutorVista, continues the story: “We implemented EyeView’s solution
on one of our landing pages that already had a pretty impressive conversion
rate. The very first test they ran boosted conversion by over 80 percent.
EyeView really works.”
We will be
running more tests over the coming months, with the aim of further optimizing
conversion for this page, but there is nothing sweeter than hitting the first
pitch right out of the park.
Congratulations
to TutorVista on having such a great product and congratulations to the EyeView
team for taking a gamble and watching it pay off handsomely.
If you want
to watch the video, I’m adding it here, but the real magic for TutorVista is
happening right on their landing page:
The BBC's
political panel show Question Time celebrated its 30th anniversary
in September of this year. The format has remained mostly unchanged in that time with
a chairman fielding questions from a live audience before a panel of invited
guests usually representing each of the three major political parties in the UK
and a journalist or representative of one of the smaller political parties.
The show,
and the BBC, has attracted considerable criticism for extending an invitation
for tonight’s live broadcast to Nick Griffin. In July of this year, Griffin was
democratically elected to the European Parliament where he represents the British
National Party (BNP) a far right party whose members have at various times made
remarks that were anti-Semitic, anti-Islam, homophobic, in support of Holocaust
denial and against mixed-race relationships. While Griffin has tried publicly to
tone down some of the less-palatable aspects of his party’s manifesto, there is
no denying the party’s (and his) roots in the murky world of British fascism.
Prior to
broadcast, the debate has centered on whether or not Griffin should have been
invited. Some people question whether the BBC, a state-funded broadcast
company, should give a platform to a man whom many consider to be an unrepentant
racist. The response of the BBC, until now, has been that it is merely the
medium and that it would be wrong for the corporation to control the message. I
don’t want to delve further into the ethics of this situation, but I do want to
think about this distinction.
We know that
online video increases engagement for the visitors to your site. We know that
the more video they watch, the more likely they are to continue along the
conversion path you have built for them. An engaged visitor is a contented
visitor and is more likely to download, register or purchase.
My question
today is how important is the medium and how important is the message? Is it
enough to embed today’s most popular video on YouTube within your landing page
to entertain your visitors? How big should such a video be? Could you turn the
entire page into a screening room for the funniest clips and hope that
prolonged exposure to such fare will cause them to click the download button
out of sheer gratitude? In presenting the medium, how much responsibility will
you take for the message?
Coming from
the other side, should you prepare a video that delivers the right message
clearly and articulately, hitting each of your marketing beats and presenting
an overwhelming case for people to continue towards conversion and then use an
clunky generic player to host it? Do you want someone else’s ads to appear on
the player during and after your precision targeted pitch?
In other
words, how should you divide your attention between the information you are
trying to get across and the method you employ for doing so?
In the case
of tonight’s Question Time, the BBC may be able to claim that they are doing nothing
wrong, merely broadcasting someone else’s opinion. On your own website, you
probably need to focus on the message just as much as the medium. Either one of
them can negatively impact your site’s effectiveness, while doing them both
well can significantly increase your conversion rate.
In the past
two years, the British government has made changes to the tax legislation that
have particularly impacted independent contractors and the agencies that
recruit and pay them.
Part of the new
legislation exists to counter fraudulent claims of tax exemption and part of it
seeks to ease the tax collection burden of small companies employing workers on
an ad hoc project basis.
These
changes have given rise to a new kind of company known as an “umbrella company”
to manage the financial relationship between the contracted employee and his or
her employer. The law makes it clear how these companies act and apart from the
fees they charge and the level of service they offer there is very little room
for any umbrella company to maneuver in terms of paying more or less tax than
another similar company.
In a new
market such as this it becomes important for the first company to offer a
service online to concisely explain the offering and establish itself as the
market leader for clarity and professionalism.
This was the
brief we received from Excellium Umbrella, an umbrella company that manages salaries,
taxes, travel expenses and meal subsistence claims all through a unique online
portal.
None of this
may be relevant to your situation, but if you take a look at this video, I
think you will appreciate how complex ideas can be expressed in an engaging,
informative and even entertaining way to build confidence with users and boost
conversion over time.
I’m really
excited about the test we are currently running for our friends at Ginger Software. Ginger Software is a
spelling and grammar checker which uses the context of the entire sentence “to
facilitate error-free writing”.
It’s a great
product that might have been aimed at people for whom English is a second
language, but that is also tremendously useful for those of us who remain a
little unsure about ‘principal’ and ‘principle’ or ‘affect’ and ‘effect’.
The A/B test
running right now on Ginger’s homepage divides incoming traffic into two groups
and offers each half one of two situations. Half the visitors will find a video
player embedded in the page that autoplays the first time they arrive there. We
know video is a persuasive medium for increasing conversion, and we also know
that forcing people to watch by using autoplay can sometimes be controversial,
so it will be interesting to compare the conversion rates for this half of the
visitors with the figures previously achieved by the homepage.
The second
group of visitors will be presented with the same homepage, but in place of the
embedded video there will be a video initiation trigger. The trigger changes as
you roll over it and if you click it the video opens in a lightbox player.
You do not have the Flash Player installed. Click Here to install it.
Another key difference with this player is that throughout the running time of
the video there is a clear call-to-action button that sits on the player and
directly reflects the call-to-action button on the site.
So, while
the video is the same in each case, the method of delivery is very different.
We will be closely tracking the conversion rates for each version and reporting
our findings in this forum in the near future.
