Many marketers confuse the concept of a landing page and a homepage, bundling them up as one.
It’s important to see these as two different web pages, which are equally important for your website, but have dfferent functions to perform.
Your homepage is designed to serve several purposes in one go, such as introducing your company, and giving a brief overview about your product or services.
On the other hand, landing pages exist to serve one purpose: getting website visitors to convert to the next stage in the buying journey. Videos play an important role in boosting this conversion rate.
Have a look at the Amazon’s homepage to get a clearer view of the difference between the two pages.
Amazon’s homepage has many clickable call-to-action tabs, but it’s not a landing page with one conversion objective that’s easy for a visitor to act upon.
Amazon have thousands of landing pages, one for each of their products. Each landing page has a clear and well executed purpose, getting visitors to click on the “Add To Cart” button.
Source: Amazon
Why landing page videos?
When online shoppers were polled, 90% of them said they found videos helpful in making decisions, making videos a powerful conversion tool.
Landing page videos not only help with conversions, but are also a great way to communicate complex messages much more clearly than bulky text-based content.
Let’s say if you’re an SaaS company, landing page videos are an amazing way to cover a lot of information in a short period of time.
Like this example from Wordstream;
Source: Wordstream
Regardless of what your business is selling and what conversion rates you are looking to achieve, it is always helpful to get inspired by the marketers who have tried experimental formats. That’s how you can get a fresh perspective, and give your audience a brand new experience.
Want to see what I mean? Let’s check out a few conversion-boosting tips for landing page videos to help inspire you.
1. Use a good thumbnail
The first thing your visitors will experience about your video is its thumbnail, and videos have to be enticing to be clicked, so the thumbnail is your first big step to engaging and converting audience members.
A thumbnail is an abstract image of your video and to get the most from it, never forget to A/B test it to see which works with your audience the best.
TapInfluence is a particularly a good example of a thumbnail video; the image creates an urge to click through as it reflects the insights of the video. The design of this page itself is clean and simple, removing many of the potential obstacles between the prospect and the goal.
Source: TapInfluence
2. Place your video above the fold
It’s a rule of thumb, whatever is attractive to visitors coming into store should be displayed for everyone to see right away, and the same goes for a landing page.
Start things off with a catchy headline and place your landing page video front and center, tempting people to click, be engaged, and convert.
It’s also true that landing pages are generally meant for simple messaging, and simple design, so don’t swamp your audience with information or confuse them. But even though it’s standard practice, you don’t always have to place your video above the fold.
Yes, you should have one primary video explaining your most important messages, but you can add to the experience and deepen the understanding of your message by providing even more videos throughout the rest of the page.
For the software company Autopilot, this was a unique opportunity to demystify lead nurturing and highlight the benefits of their software. This landing page is hard to avoid because their design is so simple and clean, yet compelling with a clear call to action.
Source: Autopilot
Similarly the video from this landing page deserves some serious attention;
3. Keep your video fascinating enough to be valuable
You must be wondering what “fascinating” has to do with a video. Wait, let me explain. No one likes to waste their time watching something that doesn’t teach them anything or make their day better or easier.
So it’s important to make sure your video content is fascinating enough to back up, explain, or give more detail about your landing page’s significant message. You want to make sure the content is useful for everyone who lands on the page, and entices them to want to know more.
Dropbox is a company that is fully invested in video production. One of my favorite web apps out there, Dropbox has two options on this page – watch a video or download the app. The landing page is unified without any clutter and guides visitors to take the direct action.
Not only is their landing page designed beautifully, but the video itself is very engaging as it quickly explains the key features of Dropbox along with the benefits.
What else do you want? Check out the video to see what I mean.
Source: Dropbox
This video propelled DropBox onto a trajectory that saw them acquire a huge heap of funding, 50 million customers and a 4 billion dollar valuation. They even had Steve Jobs knocking on their door looking to acquire their company.
4. Choose an appropriate size for your video
Video is a powerful experience but it is not the standalone experience. Make sure that along with the video there are other effective elements which can enhance your landing page even more.
Your video should not cut down any important content or images. Size each video appropriately for the value it offers the audience.
Panorama9 is an IT monitoring company for IT monitoring systems. Sounds quite boring right? But their landing page video has overcome the boredom. Their explainer video features an IT Man, a throwback to Super Mario and PacMan.
Not only is their an attention-grabbing video on their page, but catchy content combined with the perfect call to action.
Any IT sales professional who watches the landing page video and landing page layout will surely get a kick.
Check-out the humor filled video below.
Wrap
It can’t be denied that a good landing page video will do wonders for your business, but as I have said previously, a video alone cannot do the job. You have to focus on all the components of the landing page, making them work together to create an engaging experience and boost those conversion rates.
All the landing page examples you have seen have registered some real results and created tons of happy customers. So, get inspired and build your landing page accordingly, and increase your conversion rates!
Guest Author: Mehroz khan is the Co-founder & CEO of a Digital Agency – StartupBug and Co-founder of Video Explainers – Explainer Video and Whiteboard Animation Company. He loves blogging, Marketing, Strategies and Sales Funnels. You can find more of his articles on Video Explainers – Blog, Social Media Examiner or follow him on Twitter: @mehrozanwer.