Using video on your website’s landing page is an excellent way to increase conversions to a contact form, ebook download, or other mid-funnel conversion goal.
There are several things that you can do to optimize your video to increase conversions, but only if you can get visitors to watch your video in the first place!
Get better results with these 3.5 ways to increase views to your landing page video.
1. Use an Enticing Thumbnail
It (hopefully) goes without saying that you should always embed your video using a thumbnail, not simply a text link. When embedding your video, the thumbnail will need to be customized first in the video’s settings within your video hosting platform. If linking from a static image, consider adding what looks like a play button to make the video appear ‘actionable’.
Close-ups tend to work better than wide shots, and ‘action’ shots better than static ones. But above all, it should be relevant to the problem your visitor was trying to solve when clicking through to your landing page in the first place. When in doubt, A/B test it!
Thumbnails ideally should be planned in the creative development process and considered during filming or animation, in case a specific image is required. It can sometimes be difficult to find a suitable frame in a finished video, especially when filming people speaking.
2. Put It ‘Above the Fold’
Best practices traditionally dictate that your primary message and call-to-action should always be placed above the fold (what can be seen for the average browser resolution of your visitors without scrolling down). But in this case, the first action you want the viewer to take is to watch your video, so be sure to place your thumbnail here.
3. Make it Big
You’ve invested a lot in this video, so let’s make it the focus so that it can do its job. Consider that any text or other CTA’s competing for the visitor’s attention when they first arrive on your landing page might detract from the goal of simply getting them to click that ‘play’ button. Only once they’ve watched the video do we want them making the decision of whether to click your CTA.
3.5 Make it Auto-Play… Maybe
Having your video auto-play is of course one way to increase the play rate of your video, but proceed with caution! People tend to respond negatively to videos that automatically play without warning (imagine being at work or in public and having music suddenly start blaring) which can have a negative effect on viewer retention and conversions.
The best time for auto-play is when the visitor was brought to the landing page by clicking a thumbnail or link, such as from an email marketing campaign. They’ve essentially already clicked ‘play’ once, so making them do it again is worse than simply having it start playing. Fortunately, there are two ways to differentiate between these two types of visitors.
The first option would be to have two completely different landing pages setup, one with the video configured to auto-play. The other is to use the selective autoplay feature available in Wistia and some other professional hosting platforms.
Congratulations! You’ve now got eyeballs on your video, and all that’s left is to convert these viewers to the next step in your marketing funnel. Stay tuned for tips on increasing conversions from your landing page video in a future post.
