How effective is steaming video on your web site? Part 2

In a continuing effort to set ourselves apart from the hum-drum web sites that exist on the internet today, we recently made a move. We specifically wanted to address previous topics in our blog about bringing websites to life.  As always we practice what we preach, and put a few of these “talking heads” up on the home page and other pages. GREAT response! The public seems to love the idea! One of the reasons people really like ours versus the others they have seen is that at Soundstrategies, we give our visitors the control.  They can choose whether they want to watch/listen to the talking head or not.

As a rule, websites are not usually well-managed or maintained. There are some that look great and others that have an appropriate amount of content on them, though it’s tricky to find a site that has both. More often, the website is overcrowded, content overloaded with flashy graphics, trying to catch the attention of the visitor. Our recommendations are usually straight forward. Keep it simple, give them what they came for, (as soon as possible) and catch their attention with a video.  We’ve come up with several options.  Two of which are: short web videos and talking heads  – acting as tour guides — on your web site. And I must say, so far so good.

It should come as no surprise that giving the potential customer what they want, quickly and dynamically, raises your chances of converting your visitor to a lead. Web videos for our clients have been reported to help keep traffic on their site for 2 ½ minutes longer AFTER watching a video 30-seconds to 2 minutes in length.

It personalizes the business too. This is more important for some businesses than others. We have done some great work with local car dealers, helping them give a personal feel to their sites. One marketing rep told me that the goal of “Auto Sites” is to get the customer to the inventory page asap, and nothing else should matter. Of course he didn’t know that I’d spent 10 years of my life with one of the largest dealer groups in Northern California (John L Sullivan Auto Group). Therefore, I know a thing or two about the auto biz. I agree that his perspective is probably the most common, and definitely a major auto-site goal. But equally important is giving the visitor something different, and, in the past, the car business has had a hard time establishing this uniqueness. Web videos would do just that!

More to come on this subject, we are just getting started!