There are only a few things in the internet marketing sphere that are more disappointing than a homepage video producing paltry to absolutely zero conversions. According to stats culled from last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping sprees, using videos can increase conversion anywhere between 14% and 113% depending on the product category. Based on these numbers alone, putting a video clip on your homepage seems to be a sound idea.
Well, until the results come in and you see no significant change in your conversion rates.
What could you have done wrong? Here are a few conversation landmines you should absolutely avoid when using videos on your homepage.
Your Splash Screen Does Not Make a Splash
If your homepage video is your hook to convert visitors into customers, your splash screen is your hook to persuade your audience to spend a few seconds of their time to watch your short reel. A good splash screen should act like a good “still trailer” – make your audience salivate for more.
This is one small step many marketers overlook and it’s costing them thousands of dollars in potential revenues. There are basically two elements of a great splash screen. First is a catchy tagline. A good tagline provides a witty and succinct summary of what the audience can expect from the video while being controversial, intriguing and thought provoking. The second element is a visually compelling screenshot. Opt for a frame telling a story that something exciting is about to happen. Say you’re a shoe company and your video involves a popular model that will slip on the runway because she’s not wearing a pair good quality footwear. Your screenshot can show the model a second before she lands on her butt.
Launching and Leaving Your Video
Constantly evolving technologies make it extremely difficult for marketing messages to stay “evergreen.” The shelf life of online content can be very short and the same holds true for your homepage video. If you’re video aesthetics are fundamentally sound and you’re getting great traffic but paltry conversion, maybe your content is not resonating with your target customers anymore.
Stay updated with current consumer behaviors and trends – their motivations for purchasing and the roadblocks that will turn them off. Don’t just launch your video and leave it there as if it will regenerate on its own. Update the content whenever necessary.
Low Visibility on Your Homepage
This is specially a problem among enterprise level websites wherein different departments in the organization are competing for online real estate. If you’re really banking on your video to convert visitors to actual paying customers, there’s no sense putting it below the fold unless you are extremely confident that they will scroll down to the bottom of your site. Most of the time they don’t.
Moral of the story: place your video in a prominent location if you really think it is something that will help your conversion.
If a picture paints a thousand words, videos paint millions making it a powerful conversion tool. Avoid these traps to make sure that your investment won’t go to waste and read more on how you can use videos to boost your conversion rates in our Articles section.