does the size of your video matter?

With increased streaming capabilities and better video player technology, plus the ease of recording a quick video on your smart phone, the use of video in marketing has been ever growing in popularity.
With all these options come with a truck load of even more options, video size and video format to name a couple.
Plus the screen size ratios which we will get into here in a minute.
When marketing with video it seems to come down to more than just the great content, the style of your presentation, or even the graphics that surround your video. Although all these things are important especially from a conversion optimization standpoint, we wanted to answer the age old question… Does size matter?
Get your mind out of the gutter, we are talking about video size.
Now when I say video size, I am talking about the physical display as seen on your page. Actual file sizes and formats is a brand new discussion.
So how does video size play a role in your conversion rate?
With one client we had a VSL or video sales letter on a page that was actually quite large on screen. We did some recon and looked at the page on all screen sizes including mobile and noticed that the call to action below the video wasn’t showing up on the majority of the screen sizes. Quick note: You need to think like your visitor. You may have a big fancy monitor for your computer that the page looks great on, but most of your visitors may not have this luxury. Especially with the increase in mobile use. A pro tip to help you with this, is look at your analytics data and see the operating systems and browsers that most of your visitors are coming from and optimize for that.
Armed with our new found knowledge of screen sizes and how it looked we decided to run a test to see how the size of the video changed the conversion rate.
We setup a basic A/B test using our favorite testing tool.
On the first page we kept the video the normal size, obviously.
On the second page we dropped the size of the video by 20%.
Again like in most of the case studies we present here at conversion fanatics, they are simple changes that sometimes make the biggest difference.
So what was the result of our little experiment?

The video size, in this case is Variation 1 converted at 239.47% BETTER than the larger video size.
Talk about a HUGE increase from just one small change.
The reason for such an increase is the smaller video would allow the call to action to be moved up above the fold of the page for easier viewing on most devices and screen sizes. We don’t want our visitors to have to scroll down to take the desired action.
The smaller video solved this problem and of course as you can see increased the conversion rate from 1.16% to 3.95%.
So pay attention to how your visitors are viewing your sites and test out the size of the video for yourself, you too might be surprised at the results.
If you would like to see how we may be able to help you increase your online conversions I suggest you send us an email at inquiry@conversionfanatics.com to request your complimentary strategy session.