I've noticed a lot of vendors have been setting up their pages with video to make their sales pitch. I know that videos like that do have a bit higher conversion rate, as well as also giving extra backlink and promotion power from hosting it on a youtube account.

But I've been noticing more and more salespages are using a timer so that nothing but the video shows on the page until the video is over or close to over. At that time the "buy now" button, testimonials, and whatever else are finally displayed below the video frame.

I understand the point, you don't want the prospect to skip the presentation because if they go to the order page to soon, they may just decide it's too expensive or something and you lose the sale. But some of these "watch this short video" presentations are anything but short. I read about 10 times faster than the speed the text is being presented in the video. I've usually lost interest and am ready to leave the page (even if I am interested in the topic) long before the video is done.

My question is does that really increase conversions? There's an old sales adage that you shouldn't keep trying to make the sale after you've gotten a "yes". Once the customer is ready to buy you need to put an order form in front of them, if you just keep trying to make the sale it's like beating a dead horse and you're likely to turn some of those "yes"es into "nevermind"s.

Is it really better for a sales page to hold back the "order now" button until the prospect has watched a twenty minute video (of a text presentation they could have read themselves in a minute)?

I'm just wondering what other peoples thoughts are about this.

I was actually wondering the same thing. These vids are like 25 minutes long and their is no buy now button in site...it prevent potential customers from buying the product because they may be convinced 10 minutes in the video and they don't feel like waiting another 15 or don't even know that they have to in order to see the buy now button.

If they haven't got my attention within a minute I'm moving on.
Very rarely have I been riveted to a video.

You should always allow your visitors to skip the video and have the BS in text.
AND NO EXIT POPUPS!!!

=)

My opinion at-least.

I'm quite interested in this too. Hopefully someone who's actually done split testing sees this and can share their insights.

That said, what very often happens in this industry is one of the "gurus" doing (they can easily be just testing!) something and then thousands of wannabes copying the exact same strategy because "if this bloke is doing it then it must work!". There's a good chance that the same has happened with this approach.

Anyway - I'm not planning a launch at the moment but when I do the next one I will definitely split test between forced video, "friendly" video (fast forward etc. allowed) and a standard (text) sales page - all with the exact same content. Will be interesting to see the results!

I personally do not use videos on my sales pages. Whenever I get to a site with a video I find it very hard to pay attention to the sales pitch. I rather read a page and look at the highlights of the sales page before I make a decision.

Im no expert but I just remember reading on WF that video sales letters are like 50 to 100% better than regular sales letters. There is a recent thread on it.

I think that the initial impact of text outstrips video.
If the heading grabs me then I will click on the video to
learn more but am totally put off when a video autostarts
before I have had a chance to analyse the page.

Originally Posted by bigballin6161

Im no expert but I just remember reading on WF that video sales letters are like 50 to 100% better than regular sales letters. There is a recent thread on it.

Yeah, I've heard that too. Although I imagine the 50-100% is an exageration. I don't doubt that a video presentation really does have a higher conversion rate. But that's not really my question.

What I'm wondering is if locking the visitor into watching the complete video before they have any other options on a page but to watch the video Especially if it's a long drawn out video, it seems like a lot of potential customers might just get frustrated and leave the page.

The one saving grace of this practice is that a lot of these sales pages prevent the visitor from leaving the page without getting a second sales pitch. If done right that could offset the conversion rate for the ones that get bored with the video too soon. But not all of these sales pages do that, many will just lose the potential customer if they don't stay to watch the complete video.

Originally Posted by bryanon

I'm not planning a launch at the moment but when I do the next one I will definitely split test between forced video, "friendly" video (fast forward etc. allowed) and a standard (text) sales page - all with the exact same content. Will be interesting to see the results!

Yeah I'd like to see what kind of results you get from that test as well. My guess is that the 'friendly' video page will get the best conversions. But sometimes the real results are surprising on things like this.

Originally Posted by drac313

I was actually wondering the same thing. These vids are like 25 minutes long and their is no buy now button in site...it prevent potential customers from buying the product because they may be convinced 10 minutes in the video and they don't feel like waiting another 15 or don't even know that they have to in order to see the buy now button.

I've actually had my wife call me for dinner, gotten up and gone to the kitchen, served me up a plate of food, and then come back to find the video still playing and no other options available yet. lol.


The shopping habits Oxonbeef described are pretty much the same as mine about watching these videos. For something I'm actually interested just having the text in the video laid out on a page for me to read is much more effective. The only reason I ever watch these videos is when I'm looking for products to promote. If I was a potential buyer then about 100% of the time those forced video pages will lose me within about a minute or two at the most. I'm not the typical buyer that these products are targeting either though, so I'm not necessarily going to consider my feelings toward them an indication of their effectiveness.

I'd really like to know for sure though because I'd rather promote offers that have the highest converting sales page possible. I've been thinking the same thing as bryanon suggested, which is someone just saw it or heard its a good idea and then everyone started jumping on the bandwagon without knowing for sure. Or someone did some testing and determined it worked better, but most people trying to duplicate it are making the videos too long or are waiting to long to display the other links on the page. In other words it might be a good idea that most vendors are just implementing wrong.

It would be really cool to hear from any vendors that are doing it, and why.

I personally think it's a poor idea not showing the join button until the very end of the video on those hard sell, video only sales pages. If you make him wait, a percentage of surfers are going to get bored and click away. I've always made the most sales when I hustle as many hits to the join page as possible.

I've split tested all kinds of sales pages and my best converters are either regular sales pages or videos + summary text of the video and a big fat join link (opening in a new window so the surfer doesn't have to use the back button and restart the video). Really it depends on the niche and your own traffic; some buyers like to read and some like to watch videos, and the buyers are different in every niche. Also if your traffic is coming from say Youtube then they're obviously going to be more prone to watching videos rather than reading pages of text.

If you're sending "premature" clicks to the join page then your join page should really be continuing to sell your product (ie. contain a compelling summary of the product and the benefits + urgency), and if you open it in _blank then the video will continue to play and sell the surfer in the background.

I always host my vids on my own Flowplayer or JW Player rather than giving the surfer the opportunity to click off to Youtube and get distracted.

Definitely agree that a lot of tours are designed to emulate "gurus" rather than via rigorous split testing. Lately I have been using http://mouseflow.com/ extensively, which allows you to view recordings of how your surfers interact with your pages as well as different types of heatmaps. The only thing it's shown me is that there's no one size fits all and you have to test and tweak each tour to fit the niche and the traffic.

I wonder if this trend is due to people on the web becoming poorer readers? Literacy rates are dropping fast out there. Some areas of IM require the user be able to read. IE if you are selling money making schemes etc. However if you are selling porn then high level of reading is not always required. Anyway just a thought.

Originally Posted by goinviral

I wonder if this trend is due to people on the web becoming poorer readers? Literacy rates are dropping fast out there. Some areas of IM require the user be able to read. IE if you are selling money making schemes etc. However if you are selling porn then high level of reading is not always required. Anyway just a thought.

I don't know if that's really the case or not. Even if it is though it only explains the expanding use of video sales pages. A lower literacy rate doesn't explain why it would be a good idea for a salespage to lock the visitor into watching the video without any option to check anything else out on the page or even place an order before the video completes.

I think the type of people your describing would actually have an even lower attention span to stick around for a forced sales pitch. I think they'd be the most likely to use the back button or just close the page.

Originally Posted by Autumn

I've split tested all kinds of sales pages and my best converters are either regular sales pages or videos + summary text of the video and a big fat join link (opening in a new window so the surfer doesn't have to use the back button and restart the video). Really it depends on the niche and your own traffic; some buyers like to read and some like to watch videos, and the buyers are different in every niche.

See that what I would expect to be a good converter, the "videos + summary text of the video and a big fat join link". That's why it seems strange to me to force the visitor to watch 10 minute of the video before showing that "big fat order button".

It might make more sense to me if it was a good quality interview or commercial with live actors, but forcing the visitor to watch the scrolling text videos seems like it would be less effective. Having a scrolling text video seems like it would be more effective if the visitor had the option to switch over to read the text at his own speed, or at the very least give an "order button" sooner for the people that are sold on it partially through the video.

Originally Posted by GreyWolf

I think the type of people your describing would actually have an even lower attention span to stick around for a forced sales pitch. I think they'd be the most likely to use the back button or just close the page.

This probably true I never really thought of it like that and you are right it doesnt actually go to the heart of the matter why lock people out from making the purchase decision before the video is finished. Seems pretty dumb to me.. I am with Autumn on this one punch them at your join page as fast as possible. In the old days we had as little information as possible on the join page. I actually find it hard to believe that these long clickbank style pages actually work. However this is once again an aside..

Short answer is yes, it works.

The only trick is the video needs to be engaging enough or else they'll leave before your Buy Now button shows up.

I did a recent split test on this.

It's interesting, because if I was doing a sales page with NO written content, the delayed button worked better.

However, a long sales copy below the video with no delayed button did even better.

I believe the theory behind it is that you don't want to give the appearance of selling too quickly. You want the viewer to engage the video before even thinking about buying anything. That way, by the time you DO bring in the button, the viewer is already excited about the prospect of having the product.

To those who hate long copy, autostart video, timed calls to action, etc. I would just warn against using your own opinion as a gauge for how everyone would respond. For example, I hate autostart video. Can't stand it. But guess what? I use it in every single one of my sales pages right now. Why? Well, because regardless of how I feel about it, it far outperforms the alternative in every split test I conduct on it.

When it comes to how I market, I ignore my emotions, and I just go with what the numbers tell me, because at the end of the day, what I think doesn't matter. What works is all that matters.

personally i hate those videos and if i come across one i either bring up firebug and change the css hidden tag so i can click the button or i just leave.

Very well said, OTrap.

This is a concept that many marketers find extremely difficult to grasp - they tend to view things from their own perspective, rather than that of their prospects. But it all comes down to the fact that we as marketers have seen perhaps 1000 (if not more) sales pages and know all "cheap" tricks in the book, whereas most of our customers have not and therefore react very differently.

But back to the topic - interesting split test results! For some reason I have never considered doing video + long copy underneath. It's always been either video or text. Will definitely give video + text a try next time around.

Originally Posted by bryanon

Very well said, OTrap.

This is a concept that many marketers find extremely difficult to grasp - they tend to view things from their own perspective, rather than that of their prospects. But it all comes down to the fact that we as marketers have seen perhaps 1000 (if not more) sales pages and know all "cheap" tricks in the book, whereas most of our customers have not and therefore react very differently.

But back to the topic - interesting split test results! For some reason I have never considered doing video + long copy underneath. It's always been either video or text. Will definitely give video + text a try next time around.

To be fair, I market Clickbank offers almost exclusively. Check out their marketplace for examples of that. There are a few on page 1.

I'm trying to think logically here, lets take an average middle age Internet surfer who has some money in his pocket.

He obviously works, and its likely he has children. When such a person will have time to surf the Internet?

Most likely during the work hours, or after the children are asleep.

In both cases he will try to make as little noise as possible, he will quietly type his "how to become rich", expecting a quiet answer. And then we surprise him with a loud video!

I think its a pure conversion.

I am just now putting together a video for my professional service website. I'll post the results if any here. For comparison, no other company that is involved in my industry has a video on their website.


From what I've learned, I'm going to have an autostart video, not longer than 3 minutes.

I just did some investigation by surfing porn (strictly for research purposes ). I had a look at 3 of the top porn tube sites: xvideos.com, xhamster.com and pornhub.com and did a rough count of what people were advertising. Porn tubes are an interesting market because the traffic is very very tough to convert and the ad spots are very expensive (thousand of dollars).

Around 50% of the ad spots went to "traditional" porn sales pages: dating, paysites and some online pharmacies, and were either typical long sales pages (with lots of images, as is typical of porn sites), or fake blog sales pages.

However at least 50% of the ad spots were going to video only sales pages with delayed join buttons for mainly fitness products or penis enlargement, so obviously someone is making money from these types of sales pages. I had a look at a few of the videos and although they were superficially engaging, they just went on and on and on, often for 10 minutes or more with no sign of a join button. For example this vid came up a few times: http://www.truthaboutabs.com/men-get-lean-abs.html As most people know, Truth About Abs is one of the biggest money makers on Clickbank and surely that guy knows a thing or two about conversions - but it's about 15 minutes before you get a join button. What's also interesting is that most sales videos don't have any controls on them (ie you can't pause, rewind etc) - you have to sit there and watch the whole thing start to finish.

Interestingly though, with my own tracking, most sales page clicks can be divided into two categories: people who stay around for ~1 minute and then leave, and people who look around for 10+ minutes (with Mouseflow you can watch them scrolling up and down the page) and then generally go the order page. So in terms of time spent, people are probably watching these videos for about as long as they would be reading a sales page if they are a buyer.

Also I assume that in the porn surfing scenario at least, a lot of people are on their downtime, so they have time to fuck around and watch a long sales video if it seems interesting.

I guess the only way is to try it and test, but it goes against all my marketer's instincts not to hustle the surfer to the point where he can get out his credit card and give you money. Also, videos are a lot more costly to produce (in time and money) than a regular sales page, so testing until you get a good video is a lot more involved.

Originally Posted by lancis

I'm trying to think logically here, lets take an average middle age Internet surfer who has some money in his pocket.

He obviously works, and its likely he has children. When such a person will have time to surf the Internet?

Most likely during the work hours, or after the children are asleep.

In both cases he will try to make as little noise as possible, he will quietly type his "how to become rich", expecting a quiet answer. And then we surprise him with a loud video!

I think its a pure conversion.

See, you can't try to put yourself into the shoes of thousands of potential buyers. It doesn't work.

I should state that that isn't a bad place to START, but testing, testing, testing, and testing some more ... the results of THAT should help you make your decision.

I tried this with short sales copies. Long sales copy never made sense, because nobody actually reads all that shit. It stunted my ability to be successful.

Once I threw my own presuppositions out the window and went with the testing results, my business took off.

Guessing what an entire audience wants by trying to put yourself in their collective shoes (which is an impossible feat) may or may not play out. Going by the testing results will ALWAYS play out.

Originally Posted by Cnotey

I am just now putting together a video for my professional service website. I'll post the results if any here. For comparison, no other company that is involved in my industry has a video on their website.


From what I've learned, I'm going to have an autostart video, not longer than 3 minutes.

I would try testing a long video and a short video. By long, though, I only mean about 10 minutes.

Originally Posted by Autumn

I had a look at a few of the videos and although they were superficially engaging, they just went on and on and on, often for 10 minutes or more with no sign of a join button. For example this vid came up a few times: http://www.truthaboutabs.com/men-get-lean-abs.html As most people know, Truth About Abs is one of the biggest money makers on Clickbank and surely that guy knows a thing or two about conversions - but it's about 15 minutes before you get a join button. What's also interesting is that most sales videos don't have any controls on them (ie you can't pause, rewind etc) - you have to sit there and watch the whole thing start to finish.

I do think that you can click the vids themselves and pause most of them.

For some reason, those things work. I can promise you ... PROMISE you ... that they have been tested ad nauseum.

Originally Posted by Autumn

Interestingly though, with my own tracking, most sales page clicks can be divided into two categories: people who stay around for ~1 minute and then leave, and people who look around for 10+ minutes (with Mouseflow you can watch them scrolling up and down the page) and then generally go the order page. So in terms of time spent, people are probably watching these videos for about as long as they would be reading a sales page if they are a buyer.

Yeah, but it seems like video is more readily received than text, hence why films gross more than book releases.

Originally Posted by Autumn

I guess the only way is to try it and test, but it goes against all my marketer's instincts not to hustle the surfer to the point where he can get out his credit card and give you money. Also, videos are a lot more costly to produce (in time and money) than a regular sales page, so testing until you get a good video is a lot more involved.

It definitely is, but the payout is worth it.

For what it's worth, the hottest offer on Clickbank right now doesn't have the delayed CTA button, so maybe there's a swing in the market.

That's the beautiful thing about marketing. The demographic is always changing, and testing is always needing updated.

Here's the one I'm talking about:
http://mobilemoneymachines.com/sp/indexmmm2.html (no affiliate link)

So you know what, I could be out of date with my last split test (which was about 5 months ago, to be fair). That's why TESTING is what tells you the most effective way to craft a sales letter and page.

OMG do we really have to go to these lengths to get a sale?

Isn't it funny that the hotest products on clickbank always seem to products sold to other IMers? Are IMers the most gullible people on the web? I guess they must be!

I guess clickbank is where the DP and WF rejects go to spend their money. That video is one of the worst I have seen. They seem to think they can guilt you into spending your money. Who knows they may be right. However I can't help looking at something like that and going "SCAM"

Originally Posted by GreyWolf

cut

In last two years I made sites (just arranged the content, not the programming) for over 50 bookkeeping services, and with my new concept I got better conversions then with my first concept.

When it comes to customers you get different types of them, I ordered mine like this:


a.) customers that want to buy right now, that's why they are on your site
b.) customers that are on your site because they think that they need it, and want to find out why they need it
c.) users that will need your services in the future
d.) users that are on your site just because they liked the commercial, but they maybe know someone that could use your service.

Customer A needs a payment/contact/call form right away, in the same second they open the site, you will lose them if it's hard to find

Customer B needs an explanation of your service, the same second they open the site, if they don't find it, you can lose them.

Customer C needs to see that you are professional and that you are taking efford in your business

Cusomer D is the one that you don't have to care to much because the conversation is very low, but you should leave the best opinion on him, that's where the design and the whole presentation comes in. Also, I like to add a line on my site "Know someone that could benefit from our service? Send him an e-mail right away! E-mail form"

In the end, I got something like this:





Would like to hear your opinion to

Originally Posted by SyZygy

In last two years I made sites (just arranged the content, not the programming) for over 50 bookkeeping services, and with my new concept I got better conversions then with my first concept.

When it comes to customers you get different types of them, I ordered mine like this:


a.) customers that want to buy right now, that's why they are on your site
b.) customers that are on your site because they think that they need it, and want to find out why they need it
c.) users that will need your services in the future
d.) users that are on your site just because they liked the commercial, but they maybe know someone that could use your service.

Customer A needs a payment/contact/call form right away, in the same second they open the site, you will lose them if it's hard to find

Customer B needs an explanation of your service, the same second they open the site, if they don't find it, you can lose them.

Customer C needs to see that you are professional and that you are taking efford in your business

Cusomer D is the one that you don't have to care to much because the conversation is very low, but you should leave the best opinion on him, that's where the design and the whole presentation comes in. Also, I like to add a line on my site "Know someone that could benefit from our service? Send him an e-mail right away! E-mail form"

In the end, I got something like this:





Would like to hear your opinion to

Being familiar with the IM niche on Clickbank, this is familiar. Auto Traffic Avalanche and a slew of others used this format back about a year ago, and it worked really well.

I might suggest testing it against the Commission Crusher model, though, as that one seems to be going strong, currently.

Originally Posted by goinviral

OMG do we really have to go to these lengths to get a sale?

A sale? No.

Thousands of sales? Unless you're REALLY lucky, yes.

Personally speaking, I don't like forced videos...but at the same time...I know they more then likely do CONVERT...but w/out split-testing to your own list and/or customers, you'll NEVER know if it will work for you!

On the flip side...if I'm sent to forced video sales page for something I'm pretty sure I might want to affiliate myself with...I'll use one of the many video download plug-ins for FF and just start the process and come back to it later...

THAT BEING SAID...

I'm going to reach out and ram my fist into the next marketer who just happens to send me to a forced video sales page where all they do is show "slides" and read what's on the side VERBATIM!

PHUCK I HATE THAT!

But from a straight 'sales point of view'...if it works, use it...if it don't, trash it and find something that does!

Originally Posted by goinviral

Isn't it funny that the hotest products on clickbank always seem to products sold to other IMers? Are IMers the most gullible people on the web? I guess they must be!

That isn't just clickbank, that's the way it is on the whole internet. The biggest money making niches are (and have been since people started going online) "how to make money" and porn.

They aren't always the best niche for new people to go after because the competition is fierce, but if you can get targeted visitors in those niches you can make more money than with anything else you can do. It's just taking advantage of human nature.

Money and Sex!!! That's what people want more than anything else, so it isn't surprising to find that things marketed to those needs are the hottest products.

edit-
The niches that fill the need aren't just Get Rich Quick and Porn either. Related niches like "how to find a job", "how to make money", "how to market online", "weight loss", "muscle building", "how to meet women/men", how to be a good lover","get your lover back", etc. all target the money and sex needs.

I don't think so

Unless you are just targetting the US/UK/Aus/Can audience

Cause this won't work with other languages speakers , as most of them can read , but not hear english

I cut my teeth in the adult industry. In the old days, the longer the join page the worse the conversions. In fact we would try to gather as little information as possible about the user. 3 fields on the join page cc number ccv and date. Not even name! Just to get them through the door asap. Videos?? no way you would have lost them right there. But these days it is different I understand that. As for the IM niche I am happy I don't compete in that arena.

Originally Posted by WizIMS

I don't think so

Unless you are just targetting the US/UK/Aus/Can audience

Cause this won't work with other languages speakers , as most of them can read , but not hear english

Absolutely!
Videos may work for some purposes if addressed to "domestic" market. But, when selling to, say, "the whole world out there", you´d better mind that most of us, foreigners, can read or write English just as learnt at school (No conversation skills to be expected from a 1 teacher/30+ pupils ratio scheme).

Talking from my own shoes, I can read a ton of threads here at BHW not having to dust off my dictionary even once. But, whenever I run into one of those sales videos, I do sweat and swear and hit pause and rewind, then pause and rewind, then pause and... Obviously, this I only do if the video is worth it –seldom, if ever–, so, after watching 30", I merely fly away to g00gle and search for another web which serves that very same info in a more friendly style: TEXT.

Yes its true, customers and affiliates attract with video!! If you need sales then its important for you.

Originally Posted by umairsheikh2002

Yes its true, customers and affiliates attract with video!! If you need sales then its important for you.

Well we all know that videos convert.

The actual question was regarding the videos that force you to watch them without presenting a buy button or any other content until well into the video. Some of those forced videos don't give a buy button until after 15-20 minutes of watching.

Originally Posted by GreyWolf

Well we all know that videos convert.

The actual question was regarding the videos that force you to watch them without presenting a buy button or any other content until well into the video. Some of those forced videos don't give a buy button until after 15-20 minutes of watching.

Yeah you are right, I am also promoting these types of a product but I am really don't happy with it. I always think I am losing money, people does not have a time to watch complete video and wait for a buy button. Anyway these products does not convert well for me!

Originally Posted by umairsheikh2002

... I am also promoting these types of a product but I am really don't happy with it. ... Anyway these products does not convert well for me!

Do you have any stats?

Like how many hops result in how many order form impressions and how many of those result in a sale. Is your hops/order form impressions significantly worse than for other products you're promoting? Does it have a correlation between order form impressions converting to sales?

I am crushing it as an affiliate with new launch "commission streamer" which utilizes this delayed buy now button tactic. I have customers practically begging me why they dont see the buy button so i have to tell them that they need to finish watching the video to the very end. Its seems to work although I dont know the psychology behind it.

I would say this really depends on the niche. There really can't be a blanket answer.

Several people said testing is key and you cannot try to put yourself in your customers' shoes. I agree testing is key, but you have to start out somewhere and go from there, unless you have an unlimited budget for infinite variations. So you have to try to put yourself in the customers' shoes and THEN test.

The abs sales page for example: here would be my thinking, if this is advertised mainly on porn sites, who is the target audience? Some semi-chubby dude stroking to free porn, feeling bad about himself, he sees an ad promising him he'll be better with women, clicks on it, video starts playing. The cartoon video is perfect, you don't have some dude speaking at you, it's just someone drawing, you cannot see their face. It's non-threatening. Noone is selling him anything yet. He's in a visual mood, was just watching porn, not in a reading mood. While watching the video he starts suddenly thinking "shit, if this is really this easy, I can get abs, I can get those girls in the videos!" At that point he's just dieing to click the buy button, because also "shit, if this doesn't work I can just get a refund!"

Now another example:

After watching the abs video it shows it was made by

Code:

http://www.adtoons.com

If we look at their other video examples on

Code:

http://www.adtoons.com/adtoons_video-sales-letter.html

we see Sample #4 "Increasing Velocity for Pitchers" by Paul Reddick. Same style and idea as abs video.

If we go to their actual sales page:

Code:

http://90mphclub.com/

we see the video they currently have running is different, it's some dude talking at you. Also you have sales page below, email/name submit on right of video and testimonials below. Almost same setup as SyZygy posted. I believe they changed their video because their testing showed in this market it's better to have a dude talking at you. Athletes are used to having a coach, a figure of authority speaking at them, this is exactly what the dude is dressed like, a coach (doesn't hurt he works for Pirates apparently - instant credibility).

Now I have not spoken to adtoons about their pricing, but I have spoken to

Code:

http://www.commoncraft.com/

(these guys are VERY popular, theyre usually booked for months and do similar videos to adtoons, except not to low level Clickbank products, but for huge corporations, they did videos for GM, Intel, BBC, etc, you can see some companies they've worked with at

Code:

http://www.commoncraft.com/about

They don't really do direct marketing videos, their thing is more general information, explaining a difficult topic, usually more of a PR thing then a sales video (you can license a whole bunch of educational videos they produced at I believe around $400 a pop, explaining everything from how Twitter works to the US Constitution and voting laws).

I know their pricing, they charge $40,000 for a custom 3 minute video (or they did 2 years ago when I spoke with them, it's possible it's much more now). They also have several companies paying to advertise on their site at

Code:

http://www.commoncraft.com/network

to handle the overflow, offering similar service. I've spoken to several of these overflow/copycat companies, lowest quote I got was $8000 for a 1.5 min video.

The abs as well as the baseball video (one that isn't used now) cost at least $20,000 and possibly upwards of $50k. If you look at

Code:

http://www.adtoons.com/products/index.html

they have a product listed at $8,500, and that's not even an animated video, the videos require filling out info or calling (they don't even list pricing for them).

Point I'm making is the baseball guys dropped 40k on a video they didn't even use. If you have that kind of cash to drop on testing of something that you will be comfortable throwing away and not using, more power to ya. We can learn from their testing though, it looks like the sports niche the no-pause video with no sales copy and no "Buy now" until end does not work as well as the SyZygy model.

This is further evidenced by Sample #5 on

Code:

http://www.adtoons.com/adtoons_video-sales-letter.html

the website is at

Code:

http://baltimoremixedmartialarts.com/

they also went with SyZygy model (except there it can be paused, and they changed the narration to a woman).

To sum up: testing is key, but unless you have a ton of $ to spend on several expensive videos (or have talent/time to create your own), then you'd be better off trying to get into mindset of your customer, your target audience, think like them, look at your niche, what others are doing, learn and then make/order a video and then test with different setups (sales copy, no sales copy, etc). Also, every niche is different, and if you see something works in one niche DO NOT ASSUME it will work in yours.

P.S. Gonna try contacting adtoons about their pricing, for shits and giggles. Will report back to the thread with my findings.

Also, forgot to mention, one of the best books on the subject of landing page optimization I've read is:
"Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions" by Tim Ash.

If you Google book title with "torrent" in front you'll find several places you can get it for free (not that I'm advising you to do that, it's actually worth the money, although I ordered it on company CC, back when I was doing marketing for a large company).

Spoken with Tim Ash at ASW few years ago, very smart dude.

I wouldn't use only the forced video with delayed "add to cart" button. There is a simple reason for that:

What if the person has been on your site already and seen the video, but didn't want to buy the product then, did more research and then few days later came back to buy it. Does he really want to see the video again, when he just wants to buy it? No.

I am not saying that the delayed add to cart option wouldnt work. I am just saying that under the salesvideo (that you can hopefully pause and is not autoplay!) you can have a simple text link saying something "Done with the video? Click here" which then directs the person to order page (or FAQ page with testimonials etc and the order button).

Originally Posted by demongerbil

Also, forgot to mention, one of the best books on the subject of landing page optimization I've read is:
"Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions" by Tim Ash.

If you Google book title with "torrent" in front you'll find several places you can get it for free (not that I'm advising you to do that, it's actually worth the money, although I ordered it on company CC, back when I was doing marketing for a large company).

Spoken with Tim Ash at ASW few years ago, very smart dude.

Thanks for the tip. I just downloaded it here if others are interested:

Code:

http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/programming_development/LandingPageOptimization.html