EyeView's Blog

Brits Vs. Yanks - A Conversion True Story

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.

When A/B Tests Attack!

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.

Brightcove Highlights the Challenge Ahead

I have been keenly following the recent developments at Brightcove, one the world’s leading syndicators of video content. Despite cutting back on staff towards the end of 2008, Brightcove has bounced back with the release of Brightcove Express a new iteration of their service aimed at small and medium businesses and priced accordingly.

Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, has always been an evangelist for online video. When he launched the company over five years ago he stated his belief that video would become as commonplace on the web as text.

Discussing the launch of Brightcove Express, Allaire said, “In the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the number of company sites that are adding video. These are not media companies, but corporations and organizations of all kinds: consumer goods companies, universities, government agencies. Nonmedia companies are our fastest-growing segment.”

Our experience at EyeView is very similar. We are seeing increasing numbers of commercial sites beginning to harness the power of video for their businesses. Everyone wants video but many are coming to the medium without a clear vision of how their investment will be recouped. Even as video become ubiquitous there is still much uncertainty about the business model behind it. Video must be accountable or it will never succeed.

Brightcove have attempted to go around the issue by lowering the price to make it affordable for everyone, but syndication costs are just one part of the budget for video. Bobby Tulsiani, a senior analyst at Forrester, addressed this problem head-on.

The biggest challenge for Brightcove and its competitors, Tulsiani says, “is whether these company websites will be able to monetize their video content. The continued growth of the market will be determined by whether these companies can justify the cost of creating and serving videos on their sites.’’

It all comes down to establishing clear links between the implementation of video and an increase in engagement, loyalty and, of course, revenue.

Video demands ROI and the companies beginning to embrace the medium will too. The ability to deliver proven revenue gains and authentic analytics packaged with a video that is engaging, persuasive and on-message will be the key that unlocks the full potential of video for online businesses.

Decline in Digital Ads Offers Opportunity for Online Video

Online newspapers, once thought to be the only viable future for news media are no longer providing the comfort they once did. As offline ad revenues decline and cover price wars continue to cause major worries for print newspapers, publishers turned to their online siblings to help pick up the slack and for a while it was working. At first, many of the advertising dollars that left offline media just migrated online. It was the same media buyers talking to the same ad-sales personnel just about a different medium. In other words there was no advertising crisis, just a movement away from a tired medium towards a fresh and exciting one.

But, like the wrapping for today’s fish and chips, that is all yesterday’s news. In the UK the continuing depression in the property market combined with ongoing uncertainties in the job market has hit ad sales right where it hurts – in the classifieds. For too long now, newspaper publishers have depended on a booming property market and a healthy turnover of staff in key areas to ensure that they meet their targets. This report shows the problems facing the UK’s largest newspaper group, Trinity Mirror.

While the forecasts for the next few quarters are no brighter, I like to think that this downturn represents an opportunity for publishers rather than their end. No can say for sure whether the property market will return to its former heights, but publishers can use this time to regroup and think about what they really have to offer online. One of their key investments should be in video. No other online medium has the same power to persuade and encourage users to act.

I believe that as online publishers emerge from the current funk they will embrace video as the best solution for their advertisers knowing that it is the medium most likely to convert and provide value to those advertisers. At the same time, advertisers are turning to video as the most effective way of delivering a branded message with a precision-targeted call to action to each and every viewer.

Online video is the right solution for advertisers and publishers alike as they try to make sense of the current turmoil. The implementation of online video ads with measurable ROI will establish new models of publisher integrity which will rebuild confidence across all advertising sectors.

When the dust settles, people will be watching video and increasing numbers of them will be clicking on the embedded link.

Another Video Conversion Success Story

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 Message Or The Medium

The BBC's political panel show Question Time celebrated its 30^th 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.

New UK Tax Legislation Means More Interesting Videos

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.

A/B Testing Done Write

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.

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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.

In the meantime, enjoy the video.

Video Demos Are More Than Just Videos

It was gratifying to read Jason Kincaid’s piece in TechCrunch this week that he thoughtfully titled: The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do. If we disregard the fact that it might have been easier to make a video than to type that heading, Kincaid makes some strong points about the power of video to deliver something between an elevator pitch and a run through of your key features.

It’s a topic that I touched on back here when I blogged about Your Video Elevator Pitch, and it’s one that continues to have legs. Kincaid’s article focuses more on the value of video to show a product demo. While I agree completely that video should be a big part of your customer education program, I would argue that video has a more fundamental role to play on your site.

Kincaid uses the video made for Dropbox.com as an example of effective video. I watched the video on the Dropbox homepage and it does a great job of explaining the service. I was a little surprised though, when at the end of the video I was directed to go to their homepage. There was a great call to action at the close of the video to download the software, but there was no correlation between the call to action in the video and the Download Dropbox button that sat below the player. I was even concerned that the download button sat partially below the fold on my laptop screen making conversion less likely for the people who watch.

I guess the point is that a great video demo is part of the solution, but you also need to concern yourself with placement and conversion to ensure that you’re getting the best return on your investment.

As always with TechCrunch one of the most valuable parts of the article is the comments section. From there I got this great link that Andrew Angus over at Switch Marketing put together of Producers of Explanatory Videos.

You Don't Need 300 Million Users To Make Money (... But It Helps!)

First of all, congratulations to young Mr. Zuckerberg and the rest of the team at Facebook. According to his blog post yesterday, the site now has over 300 million users. This is a remarkable feat by any standard and places Facebook firmly in the pantheon of internet gods. Given that the announcement about reaching 250 million users only came in July, we can see that Facebook continues to experience remarkable growth as it becomes an essential part of many people’s lives.

Perhaps even more importantly for Mr. Zuckerberg, he was able to announce that Facebook had finally become “cashflow positive”. An interesting choice of words that is open to interpretation as Alan Patrick of Broadsight amusingly points out on his blog. At least one thing is clear and that is whatever interpretation of “cashflow positive” Facebook uses for this past quarter, it is not likely to have made much of dent in the $700 million that has already been invested in the site.

So, if it takes one of the world’s most popular sites five years, 300 million users and $700 million of investment to make money, what hope is there for the rest of us? Plenty. And the reason is this. You don’t need 300 million users to make money. What you do need is a clear conversion strategy for the users or visitors you do have.

Facebook has built its user base with fantastic word of mouth and viral expansion through every demographic. The rest of us are using a combination of PPC, SEO and other SEM tactics to generate traffic to our properties. But even without a viral tsunami we can all still do more to optimize the value of the traffic we generate for our sites.

You may even find that your real online business is not an ad-supported behemoth like Facebook, but a lean and keen revenue-generating machine with a real product and an open and defined strategy for turning your visitors into purchasers or subscribers or downloaders. Facebook needed 300 million visitors in order to start making money. My bet is that you can achieve the same goal with far fewer.