Six areas where video can increase sales on your website

Businesses have been creating videos for years, in the form of ads on TV. However, few of them use video on their own websites. Instead, they prefer using text to generate sales.

If you’re one of these businesses, it may be time to reconsider your video marketing strategy. Here are a few facts and stats for you to chew on:

• Video now shows up in 70% of the top 100 search results listings, and viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy a product or a service after watching video.
• Around 100 million web users watch online video daily, and videos boost people’s understanding of what you are offering by 74%.
• 9% of marketing professionals worldwide cite video as the type of content with the second best return on investment, after featured articles.

In other words, video is a sales tool that you can’t afford to ignore as it can be a powerful way to show – rather than to tell – people what your business is all about.

Have we got your attention now? Read on to see six areas where videos can increase conversions on your site.

Homepage

Vidyard, a video marketing platform, increased conversions by 100% by putting a video on its homepage. InDinero.com, an online financial dashboard for businesses, decided to switch from a traditional homepage design with text to one that only included a big video and simple sign up form. The results? The page with just a large video has increased inDinero’s signups by almost double from 6.8% to a whopping 11.2%.

Here’s a nice example from a dog trainer’s website who shows off his skills by putting a featured video on his homepage:

So, whatever your business or industry, you might want to give this a try. What should your homepage video be about? Perhaps a short overview of your product or service or what your business is all about. Try it out and see if it works for you.

Video-only landing page

Fitness trainer Carl Juneau has managed to increase his website’s conversions by 46% by switching from a long-form sales letter to a video-only landing page.

Why did video-only work so well? It may be because the long sales letter turned off visitors while the short, punchy video grabbed their attention and got them excited about the trainer’s offering.

So if you have landing pages with lots of text that don’t convert at all, or that only keep visitors on the page for a few seconds, you might want to reconsider your approach. Use all that information and dress it up in a short, catchy video that explains what your business is about and how it can benefit your customers if they buy from you.

Product videos

Even though the number of online purchases is growing, there are still many people who are wary of paying for something they can’t touch, play with or see in full detail. Put this to rest by not only adding images of your products but by also adding a quick video showing your product in movement, being worn, or just to scale.

Product videos are a great way to increase conversion rates online as they reassure potential customers that they’re buying the right product for them. While they can’t hold the product in their hands before buying it, using video to give them a full view of the product is a great way to reassure them and also to limit the impact of returns.

GoPro does an excellent job by showing videos on their product pages of how their cameras work and the quality you can achieve when using them.

If you can show real people using your product, and not an ad that’s obviously touched up, it’s infinitely more powerful than a few hundred words or some images.

Zappos is one of the original success stories in this area. After the ecommerce site started using video on a huge number of product pages they found that sales had increased between 6% and 30% for items that included product demos.

Here’s an interesting fact: conversion rates on product pages that include videos are higher even if people don’t watch them. By simply giving them the option to watch a video you’re converting at a significantly higher rate compared to the same product page without the option for video viewing.

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Product demonstrations and tutorials

If you have a product that people think is complicated to use, why not get a video up there to better explain how it works?

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use text at all on the page. Text is important too, especially for potential customers who want to do more research or find out more about a particular feature.

However, when you have a short demo or tutorial video that explains what your product does, how they can get started using it and how to make the most of it – you are sure to attract more customers than with a long, detailed page explaining the products’ numerous features. No one’s going to read that.

Check out this example from FloodSax:

The video shows exactly how the product works and how people can use it in case of a flood.

Here’s another example: if you’re a 123-reg customer, you’ve probably ended up on our support website to learn how to move your domain to us, how to use or work with some of our products. We have a huge collection of support content and to make it easier to digest, we’ve added video tutorials such as this one, which explains how to register your domain name:

This is a fantastic way to show step-by-step instructions for a specific task, instead of just writing guidelines. Think about it – wouldn’t you prefer seeing how a recipe is prepared instead of reading it?

Customer testimonials

People trust other customers and social proof is so powerful these days. Sure, a written testimonial can help but video testimonials are so much more powerful at instilling confidence in potential customers and at reassuring them that your product or service will work as advertised and will help solve their problem.

The simplest example I can think of is from our own 123-reg website. We’ve put together a video where five of our customers share their top reasons for using our services and how these have helped them grow successful business online.

So if you have loyal customers who love your business and what you’re selling, encourage them to share their experience with your audience. But don’t just ask them to praise your business. Ask them to be specific when it comes to the problem they faced and how your product or service has helped them solve it.

Media highlights

If your business has been mentioned on TV, kudos to you! Now would be a great time to take advantage and upload that coverage to your website.

When FloodSax was featured on TV they let the world know about it:

And so should you! There’s nothing wrong with bragging a little so dedicate a page for your media coverage, especially if you have several videos mentioning your business or your offering.

Wrapping up

When you use video on your website, customers can experience your business in a way that fancy website with a well written About page just can’t match. They can learn about your product, hear your voice, and see your face.

In addition, video:

• Entertains, educates and inspires.
• Improves search results, considering that video results have appeared in nearly 70% of the top 100 search listings on Google in 2012.
• Is shareable. Whether on Facebook, Twitter or your YouTube or Vimeo channels, if your video is short and catchy, people will share it online.
• Enables you to cultivate an emotional connection with your audience, which can give you an edge in a crowded market.
• Is measurable. You can count views and likes, track shares and read comments.

Plus, once you have the video, it’s there to stay until you decide to remove it. You don’t have to pay for it to be aired every day on TV. People can watch it and replay it as many times as they want. That saves you money.

Now, if you’re ready to get started, read our beginner’s guide to effective low-cost online video marketing to learn about the tools you’ll need to create your videos, how to get them on your website and how to measure their success.

Are you using videos on your website? Have you noticed an increase in the number of sales as a result of using video? We’d love to hear from you so share your experience and advice in a comment below.