How Video Can Help Boost Your Conversions By 18.8%

Have you ever wondered just how much video can impact your conversions?
Today we are going to take a look at a very unique case study all around the benefits of video…  does size matter, autoplay vs. not, and if a “pretty” video is better than a standard powerpoint style video.
We do know that in some cases and some industries the use of video can really help in driving out conversion rates.  Loads of tests have been done by not only us but others as well.  Video is a great way to showcase a product and really get in touch with the website visitor.
In this particular campaign we definitely wanted to test video.  This client is in a VERY competitive niche and any advantage they can leverage the better they are going to be in the long run.
We started testing on one of their main products which they had a little trouble getting a consistent amount of people to take their free trial.  They knew based on their data that this particular product has the biggest stick rate out of any of their vast library of products and is highly profitable.  So the big objective was to get more people to actually take the test drive.
The initial tests proved effective by increasing the sign up rate by more than 30% by highlighting the benefits of the product and re-designing the page.  Since we are constantly striving for better we decided to test some video.
We wrote a script and had a professional voice actor record it.
With the script we created a basic video containing images and text on background.  Think of a powerpoint presentation.
We simply wanted to see just how much impact the video would have on the trial signup rate and we were pretty disappointed in the initial results since video can be a powerful tool.

The initial video test actually decreased the conversions by 15.1%.
After a little brainstorming and approval from the client we agreed to create a more professional video that was more animated.  This was sort of a big gamble as these types of videos aren’t necessarily the cheapest to get created. Keep in mind that up until this point our tests proved that “prettier” wasn’t always the best converting option.  This market responds to “boring” for lack of better terms.
Armed with the new video, using the same voiceover audio from the previous video we tested it and the initial results are promising.

 
Above you can see the control for this experiment (some information blocked out out of sake of privacy)
We tested several variations in regards to the video.  Small video, small video with autoplay, full width video, and full width video with autoplay.
Can you guess which one of the variations proved to be the winner?

 
Above you can see the “small video” variation.
As well as below you can see the full width variation.

 
And the results of this test?

The small video without autoplay showed just a slight improvement of .3% which is not enough to make it a true winner.
The small video with autoplay actually decreased the signup rate by almost 29%.
Full width without autoplay showed a decent increase of 6.2%.  Which would be a nice bump in conversions when looking at the overall picture of this campaign.
But the actual winner ended up being the full width video WITH autoplay with an 18.8% increase in free trial signups.
Did you pick the winner?
No matter how many tests we run, we are often surprised by just what has the bigger impact.
In this case we proved that video can have a big impact and was worth the gamble to get this video created due to the fact that the increase in customers and the value of those customers FAR outweighs the cost of creating the video.
What are you testing?  Have you tested autoplay vs not? How about the size and layout of your video?
Test some of these elements to see just how much impact they can have on your conversion rates.
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If you want to discuss how we may be able to help you increase your overall advertising effectiveness and help you test faster, be sure to reach out for your no obligation conversion acceleration session.  On the call we will go over your campaigns and discover high leverage areas that can help you boost your results.