Lately I’m seeing a lot of landing pages and squeeze pages that are using video to convert prospects to customers. Nothing new there, we’ve been seeing video on the web for a long time now and adding video allows you to persuade across several modalities but the interesting part is not simply the use of video but rather how the non video part of the page is being used.
The video is above the fold and very prominent, the remainder of the page below the video is blank, no call to action, no headlines or and copy at all, the video stands on it’s own. The videos in the landing pages I’ve been seeing have been really long, over 3o minutes in length. Now here’s the interesting part. About half way through the video a call to action button appears in the blank area below the video.
In essence what this technique is doing is converting all the compelling and persuasive copy of a traditional landing page and turning it into a video.
This is a bit risky in terms of conversion rates. If the first half of the video is not fast enough at getting to the value proposition, you’ll loose the visitor before they had an opportunity to click and convert on the button that appears mid video. The benefit of a non-linear medium like the web is that your visitors can move freely about at their own pace and go down side paths to answer questions they might have at different points in your conversion conversation. Forcing them down one and only one path of a traditional landing page / squeeze page usually improves conversion rates because they can’t get distracted but when the only option you have is a 40-50 min video you’re asking too much in terms of time for visitors to convert. At least that’s my initial impression, but I have to admit it is an interesting test to see if this method converts more visitors. In the end we are not the ones who can really decide, only our visitors can decide what works and that is why we test. To set up a test of your own and increase your conversion rates, contact me, I’ll be happy to help you get more visitors to take more action.
