Our society watches a ridiculous amount of video online these days. With over a billion users, YouTube is responsible for hundreds of millions of hours of video being consumed every single day. Watch time on YouTube has been up at least 50 percent year over year for three straight years, further proving that consumers are absorbing video at an alarming rate.
Are you currently using video on your website? If not, take a look at these five reasons why you should consider using video to help improve your conversion rates.
Videos command attention.
It’s no secret that most people have short attention spans ― reading long-winded pieces of content is the last thing they want to do. Using video allows you to capture their attention and deliver your message in a format that they will pay attention to.
Check out these stats, showing why you should consider visual content, such as videos, over traditional text-based content:
- 55% of website visitors spend less than 15 seconds actively reading content on a page
- 65% of your audience is visual learners
- 93% of human communication is nonverbal
- 90% of all information transmitted to our brain is visual
- People remember 80% of what they see, compared to 20% of what they read
Videos answer your visitors questions.
There is a good chance that a very large percentage of your visitors will have the same basic questions regarding the product or service you offer. Video allows you to answer these questions before they ask them, and when your prospects don’t have questions it will push them into the conversion cycle much faster.
According to Chris Oliver, CEO of Hauseit, a for sale by owner real estate brokerage in New York, video has been a tremendous help in pre-qualifying leads, stating, “We use short video clips on all of our internal pages in an effort to answer any questions a potential home seller has about the FSBO process. Since implementing video, we have seen our leads increase significantly.”
Videos allow you to tell your brand’s story.
Let’s assume you only have 42 seconds to deliver your message. Could you get your full message across if someone read 42 seconds worth of text or would a video work better? Well, 42 seconds is exactly how long this explainer video is that my company created for the business forum we made for entrepreneurs.
It’s fun and holds the viewers attention, while delivering the story of what EBOC is all about. All of that in just over 40 seconds. That’s how effective visual content, and video especially, can be.
Videos keep your visitors on your website longer.
With visual being processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text, it’s no surprise that video will keep a prospect on your website longer. Longer sessions will naturally translate into more conversions. Here are some very interesting statistics:
- Including video on a landing page can increase conversion by 80%
- 90% of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision process
- 36% of online consumers trust video ads
- 5% of viewers will stop watching a video after 1 minute and 60% by 2 minutes
- Dr. James McQuivey estimates that one minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words
Jonathan Long is the Founder & CEO of Market Domination Media®, an online marketing agency that provides SEO coaching and online marketing consulting. Jonathan also created EBOC (Entrepreneurs & Business Owners Community), a private business forum. Follow him on Twitter.