EyeView's Blog

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.

Video Marketing Quiz 2009

One of the benefits of working for a company that is committed to testing is that we never have to fall back on guesswork. When EyeView releases data about the impact video has on conversion, you can be sure that the data comes from real sites using real traffic. We don’t deal with suppositions, simulations or uncertainties. Instead, EyeView has a scientific approach to conversion optimization where every element is tested to prove its worth and every assumption examined to establish its authenticity.

The Video Marketing Quiz (VMQ), which you can find here, is the culmination of several weeks’ work to find an engaging way to present some of the data we have collected to the community of marketers. The quiz will test your instincts and help you understand effective use of video for businesses.

How do we distribute content in 2009?

Once we were sure the quiz could provide value, we looked for the medium that was best placed for sharing that value with the marketing community. Much has been written over the past few months about Twitter and its value for businesses. For the most part that value has been ascribed to consumer-facing (B2C) businesses like Zappos.com or Comcast who are leveraging Twitter to maintain relationships with their customers and establish their reputations as companies that care. On the surface our company is a classic business-facing (B2B) business, but we are discovering that the old B2B models aren’t as relevant anymore. B2B relationships aren’t about businesses communicating with other businesses, they are about individuals within a business talking with individuals working somewhere else. Twitter is the perfect tool for humanizing relationships, not just with consumers but with business partners, colleagues and peers.

We are launching this year’s VMQ using Twitter as our main communications medium backed up by Facebook and LinkedIn. We believe that a friend spreading the word to other friends is the most effective way to reach a broad group of people. As more people take the quiz and share the experience with their trusted network, we hope reach a wider audience and share our experience and add value to the community that provides value to us very day.

So, enjoy the quiz, share the quiz and thank you for everything that you share with us.

You can find us on Twitter here.

Web Video Is Key

One of the joys of the Internet is finding other people who really get whatever it is that you are interested in. I stumbled across Wayne Ford and his site Video is Key recently and was excited by his take on all things video.

Wayne comes to video as a producer and editor for Buzz Media and it’s clear that he understands what it takes to make great video. But, more importantly, Wayne is able to articulate how to make video work online for bloggers and small businesses.

I downloaded Wayne’s report, Web Video Is Key (cheekily subtitled: A Kickass Report For Bloggers And Internet Marketers) and found plenty of great ideas in it.

One of the bravest things Wayne does is to segment web video into a number of types of video such as The Introduction Video, Product Demos and Customer Testimonials. He includes with each description a suggested time limit. It’s one of the things I am always concerned about when dealing with customers who have a clear idea of their message and are convinced that every element of it must be delivered during the course of the video. Pre-defining limits for your video’s duration is a tough thing to do and a tougher thing to enforce with willful clients, but it’s great to see someone putting this down in print.

The rest of the document is packed with useful tips, case studies and links and I highly recommend that you take a look.

Online Video Backlash? What Backlash?

I thought it was a peculiarly British characteristic to put examples of success up on a pedestal and then to pelt them with the rotten fruit of envy at the earliest opportunity. So you can imagine my surprise when I read Ben Weinberger of Digitalsmiths writing about the “Internet Video Backlash” here as if online video was already on its last legs.

The truth is that online video is not going anywhere. The struggle to justify its expense is not a new one and it existed long before online video broke out and became the must have feature of every B2C and B2B website.

Weinberger is confusing online video with online video advertising a mistake he is not alone in making. Online video established itself as an important new medium when people began embedding clips on their blogs. Huge communities built up around video aggregators which generated huge bandwidth costs which belatedly forced site owners to try to recoup some of their expenses with advertising. In other words, online video advertising is world’s attempt to catch-up and profit from the surprise success of a new medium. Two years into the boom, no one has quite worked out how, yet.

Recent reports suggest that the largest aggregator, YouTube, may finally be closing in on profitability, but the struggle for most sites continues with huge amounts of unsold inventory.

But what if they’re all approaching the problem backwards? Online video doesn’t have to be the placeholder around which you build your revenue model. For businesses, online video is much more than entertainment. Online video can inform, it can educate and it can convince. Online video is not just an anchor for your revenue generation efforts, it should be a key part of your strategy.

Old world thinking says that online video drives audience and the bigger the audience the more money can be generated from ads. New world thinking says you should calculate your ROI directly from the videos by using them to build loyalty, solve problems and convert users into paying customers.

Online video is fast becoming the medium of choice for C-level executives when they want to learn about a product or business opportunity. More and more people are turning to video when they want to understand more about the site they are visiting. They would rather play a video than wade through paragraphs of text.

If you have spent any amount of time on website optimization to increase your conversion, then it’s time you started using video as part of your site’s optimization plans.

The Three Types Of Video For Business

I was inspired by this great post to consider again the uses of online video for business to see if they could be categorized in a way that was helpful for marketers.

Online video has exploded in popularity and entered the mainstream, but video for business usually has to do more than just entertain. I want to look at the three kinds of online video that I have seen and identify what makes them different from each other.

Viral Video

Viral video was the first type of video born from the boom in online video. Viral videos can be expensively put together on a huge marketing budget such as the latest sensation from Evian or they can be cobbled together for the cost of some candy and a few bottles of diet soda.

The success of a viral video is measured by how many people see it. When you make a viral video, you have to consider distribution and promotion. You have to make sure it’s a little unusual or at least unexpected. It certainly has to be original. Viral video is not easy, but, done well, it can raise your profile and bring you traffic.

Conversion Video

Conversion video sits on your business site with a singular goal – to increase the number of conversions from bystanders to buyers, from spectators to subscribers, from visitors to vendees (alliteration is awesome!). Once you set a clear conversion goal, you should measure the impact of your conversion video on that goal.

Conversion video must be accessible, it must be engaging and it must have a clear call to action. Conversion video may not have the style and originality of viral video but it has the virtue of being accountable and, done well, revenue generating.

Educational Video

Education video covers the spectrum of how-tos, tutorials and demos. Educational videos are a great addition to your company’s site because they increase engagement. Educational video can also be a great differentiator for your site which can help build loyalty. A consumer is more likely to purchase equipment from the company that cared enough to teach him how to use it.

Educational videos may also help you to cut down on time spent fielding customer support queries. Educational videos must be clear and precise, but they are less restricted by duration than other types of video. The benefits to your company from educational video may not be felt immediately, but they can help distinguish yourselves in a crowded market.

Conclusion

I’m always thinking about video and the best ways for companies to make the most of it. I think dividing online video into these three groups might help to identify the goals for your video and therefore the best way to measure its success.

Video Ain't What It Used To Be

Video just isn’t video anymore. Or, rather, video isn’t just video anymore. Video has come a long way since the first skateboarding cat did the rounds on YouTube. If video has to do something more than entertain the viewer for 20 seconds then it has to offer more than a one-way viewing experience.

When we sit down to talk with our customers about video they understand that video has to work for them. Our reports consistently show that the longer a viewer spends watching a video, the more likely he or she is to respond to the call to action and achieve the conversion goal set by the site. Viewer engagement is the key to successful video and we are always looking for new ways to engage with the viewer.

The example below explores a number of different ways for the viewer to engage. The narrative of the video is broken up into a series of chapters each with its own link on the left hand side of the player. Some chapters are further divided into sub-chapters. The viewer can choose to watch in any order skipping around to find the items of interest. This reflects the way the viewer might access similar information on a web page.

In addition, this particular video offers a choice of languages. Try switching between the languages using the drop-down menu on the top right of the player. You will notice how the contextual menus on the left side of the player all change to match your choice. Listen and you will hear that the voiceover has also changed. Have a closer look at the content of the video and you will see that the language of the screenshots inside the video has also aligned itself with the language you chose.

Even before you consider the content there is a whole list of things you can do with your video to ensure that your viewers will remain engaged.

After this video went live for eBay it was seen over fifty thousand times in the first few weeks. Each view averaged six sub-chapters proving the video’s ability to engage the viewer and persuade them to watch more.

Video is not just about the content of your video anymore. You need to consider the presentation and delivery of your video as an essential part of its success. You spend an enormous amount of energy refining your message, but what are you doing to ensure that people are paying attention when you talk?

Topify The World, Ma!

I’m a newcomer to Twitter, but I can already see some of the ways it’s consuming my time unnecessarily. Every time someone decides to follow me (which I still find pretty thrilling), I get an email with a link. I have to follow that link if I want to find out more about my new follower and then click again when I decide to commit to the courtesy of a follow back.

It seems like a lot of clicking to manage a simple relationship, so I was delighted when we started working with Topify. With Topify you get a much more attractive email with loads more useful information such as the user’s profile and last few updates. Then if you decide that your new follower is worth following back, you just hit reply and send. Brilliant.

If you're quick, you can still get an invitation to the Topify Beta by clicking here.

When we put together our video for Topify we kept it as easy to use as the service itself. A nice animated trigger on their home page leads into a clean, branded player with chapter buttons and all the social media bookmarks you could wish for.

Ouriel at Topify has already been tweeting contentedly about the new look and I think our guys have done a great job in telling a straightforward story in a clear and compelling way.

It’s good to see that we’re delivering everything we promised to customers like these.

Way Beyond Reasonable Doubt

I know many of you don’t have time to read through long and tiresome blogs, so ladies and gentlemen of the jury here are the facts. Duplicate Poker, A unique and legal online poker site with a difficult concept to grasp had this flash animation on their site. Please view the following:

You do not have the Flash Player installed.
Click Here to install it.

©2007 EyeView Inc.

Along came EyeView’s video into duplicate’s world, a higher quality rich media solution. Conversion was raised immediately by 4%. After tweaking the serving options, the video conversion rate was increased by a further 6%.

You do not have the Flash Player installed.
Click Here to install it.

©2007 EyeView Inc.

Video talks, Quality walks!! I rest my case your honor.