Increasing web presence and customer engagement with an animated video on your home page

The trend for using online videos has and continues to increase incredibly quickly, providing both B2C and B2B consumers with a tide of imaginative and innovative content to feast their eyes on.

Short animated videos including whiteboard explainer videos are proven to be extremely effective in capturing the imagination and engaging audiences.

Showcase your assets
The aim of any marketing should be to show what you do, how good you are at doing it, and why consumers should choose you. All this can be done by using an animated video on the homepage of your website. A video can be used to convey all your key messages and USP’s in a fraction of the time that it takes to read your text content, not to mention with a lot less effort.

Time is of the essence
In early 2014 data revealed that over 55% of website visitors spent less than 15 seconds on websites - granted this kind of data varies depending on what kind of industry you’re in, however we all know (from our own habits) that we’re pretty quick to click away from a website that doesn’t immediately grab our attention.

We’re all watching more online video
Although I’m not a big fan of statistics they do speak volumes when illustrating the trend towards online video and how it’s becoming a preferred format for online consumers.

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• Youtube receives more than a billion unique visits every month - that’s more than Yahoo, Bing and Ask combined
• 50% of all mobile internet traffic is from people watching online videos
• Videos within email marketing increases your click through rates up to 200%
• Videos are liked, shared, tweeted and mentioned in social media more so than any other format.
• Videos increase understanding in products and services by 74%

Declutter, organise and simplify your offering
The home page of your website can be an awfully tricky area of your business to get right, albeit vitally important that you do. It must engage quickly, retain and encourage your visitors to make an enquiry and or a purchase.

An overcrowded and disjointed homepage is never appealing, and will likely fail to convey your key messages and USP’s. Too much text can be overbearing and a particular turn-off for those viewing on mobile devices with small screens.

An animated video not only provides the opportunity to neatly package your offering within an easily digested format but also provides you with the opportunity to spruce up your homepage, keeping it clean, fresh and more appealing to visitors.

More than just words
Trying to communicate the essence, personality and principles behind your business through words alone is not always easy, but it is becoming more important as consumers are turning more attention to these details when choosing the brands and products they consume.

Video is a fantastic way for you to genuinely engage with your visitors and demonstrate your brand personality. The animated explainer video above demonstrates how in only one minute a relatively complex subject can be wrapped and packaged in an entertaining, friendly and approachable manner, helping to instil confidence in the company and  encourage the viewer to find out more.

Storytelling
For services, products and perhaps investment opportunities that are not particularly self descriptive a degree of explanation will likely be required. When considering a video for your business a typical scenario is to demonstrate the challenges that may face your target audience, then follow this up with how you provide the solution to them. This formula is best applied and adapted by developing a story that your audience can easily relate to - with a video being the natural way to present it to your audience.

Whiteboard animations
Whiteboard animations are a fantastic format for telling a story - they work by stimulating what’s known as ‘viewer anticipation’ - a reaction we have all experienced when we’ve stopped in the street to watch what an artist is creating. This reaction makes whiteboards perfect at grabbing and keeping the attention of website visitors.

Research in recent years by Dr Richard Wiseman, Psychology Professor at the University of Hertfordshire has proved that whiteboard animations dramatically improve the transfer and retention of information in those that watch them - with on average a 15% improvement in how viewers recalled information having watched them compared to standard live video.

SEO, authority and lead generation
Google continues to place more importance on video content when returning search results. According to Forrester Research you are 53 times more likely to appear on page one of Google if you have a video on your website.

Google isn’t the only reason to consider animated videos though - including video within your email marketing increases click through rates up to 200%. Further still videos are proven to help improve lead generation, increase the time on your website resulting in lower bounce rates and most importantly increase authority in your brand... So what are you waiting for - start thinking of how you can tell your story!

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A history of YouTube video marketing

Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not video marketing has become a part of our everyday lives, whether we’re creators, brands or consumers, in fact the roots of video marketing stretch way back, further than we realise. Since the early days of internet advertisers have searched for a format to equal the effectiveness and reach of the ads that we watch during commercial breaks on television.

Although video marketing has a long and rich history its two videos; “The Spirit Of Christmas” made by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone in the early to mid 90’s that are often credited with paving the way for today’s industry – the first of which was passed around colleagues at LucasArts having been cleaned up by an animator, and the second being commissioned by Fox executive Brian Graden as a video Christmas card having seen the first video. The two features became the precursors to the hit series.

Video has come along way since it first made the leap from tape to pixels with these first muffled, low resolution attempts, but it wasn’t for another decade until YouTube put the marketing into ‘video marketing’ and brands, promoters, marketeers and technology giants raced to be the first to harness the value that video continues to provide.

With the launch of YouTube came the era of the viral video!

The earliest forms of video marketing were in fact the overlay and display adverts positioned alongside popular YouTube videos – This revenue stream allowed creators who were previously making content for free to potentially make a living.

In the early days of YouTube few brands and businesses were making good use of video in a meaningful way, one trailblazer at the time however was Tom Dickson, Founder of Blendtec.

Dickson created what’s considered to be one of the first and best viral marketing videos to promote their range of kitchen blenders. Each episode would see Dickson setup a scenario with all the enthusiasm as a high school science master, proclaiming “will it blend” as he stuffs a suitably unsuitable object into one of their ridiculously powerful $400 kitchen blenders.

It all sounds more like a comedy short than a piece of serious advertising, but over the following two years their ‘Will It Blend’ videos turned a brand with little mainstream recognition into one of the most recognised and talked about brands on the planet, attracting over 1.5 million views on Youtube and helping to increase sales of their Total Blenders by over 600%.

Despite there being little technical distinction between viral videos and the rest, businesses such as MacDonalds and Fiesta began finding innovative ways to make use of creators and ‘Youtubers’ to promote their brands.

As the digital revolution accelerated, driven by the new iPhone and the proliferation of broadband internet access video consumption became more and more in demand. As competition for audiences and views increased the collaborative efforts between creators and marketers worked for both parties, helping to shape yet another online industry.

The Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” video uploaded in early 2010 saw yet another twist in the way video could add value when it spawned a multitude of parody and spoof versions. This not only helped to spread their original message entirely for free, but also demonstrated the value created when an engaged audience interacts with your video content.

Now that a relationship between makers and advertisers had been determined Multi Channel Networks or MCN’s began popping up to take advantage. In short MCN’s help creators/artists and brands to generate a revenue through multi platform distribution and management. They do this by affiliating themselves with multiple YouTube channels. MCN services involve assistance with programming, funding, promotion, partner management, digital rights and copyright management, monetisation, audience development and more.

MCN’s led the way in collaborative guerrilla ads, brands would pay a premium through MCN’s to run ads cleverly disguised as videos. These kind of videos have been used to promote many brands including airlines such as WestJet’s 2013 Christmas video through to new movies such as often priming audiences for what was to come.

As audiences find evermore different ways to use video, marketeers and advertisers find more innovative ways to promote the products and services they offer.

Although big budget viral videos have their place many brands have focussed more attention on ‘social video marketing’ campaigns that often compliment other social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. These kinds of campaigns focus more on core audiences and generate much more more meaningful discussions, not to far better indicators of their success through increased sales.

In recent years video has grown, matured and become mainstream, it’s reshaping the internet as we know it, and will continue to do so. For consumers it’s far easier to consume a three minute video off our smart phone than to read a couple of pages of text, if you’re still here?

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Why animated whiteboard videos work on audiences

How animated whiteboard videos engage audiences and improve the transfer of knowledge - making them great for your business...  

Today we watch more video than ever before, on average there’s around six billion hours of video watched per month on YouTube alone. Super-fast wifi and high definition smartphones, tablets and iPads enable us to conveniently watch online from wherever and whenever we like. 

For businesses both large and small, from startups to multi nationals, online video provides a fantastic opportunity to reach and engage their targeted audiences like never before.

One of the most popular and widely used formats are whiteboard explainer videos, or scribe videos. These have become popularised by organisations such as the RSA charity and have proven to be a huge hit among audiences. In fact this relatively simple yet effective technique has been proven to be more effective at knowledge transfer than other types of online video.

Award winning professor of psychology Dr Richard Wiseman, an award winning professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire carried out several tests where he observed that whiteboard animations outperformed ordinary ‘talking head’ videos in memory tests, problem solving, shareability and their overall impact on audiences.

Having recorded a normal ‘live video’ of himself talking he then created a whiteboard version using exactly the same transcript in a bid to observe how viewers would react and respond having watched each video.

The results by any standards were astonishing, on average there was a 15% improvement in how the viewers recalled information they absorbed from watching the whiteboard animation compared to the standard video format.

Dr Wiseman himself said of the results... “Anyone involved in education or research will know that is absolutely massive. Normally you have to work incredibly hard to get 5, maybe 10% increase in any kind of behavioural measure like that. Simply by animation you’re seeing a 15% increase.”

On one particular question put to those that viewed the whiteboard video 92% recalled a correct answer compared to only 22% of those who watched the ordinary video.

So what reasons are there to explain such a marked difference in the way that one video format successfully transfers knowledge to your audience over the other?

ANIMATED WHITEBOARD VIDEOS BETTER ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE...
Figuring out how to engage an audience can be a real challenge, however it turns out the process itself of a whiteboard animation stimulates what’s called ‘viewer anticipation’ - a reaction that we’ve all experienced whether as excitable kids watching our parents draw us a picture of a Woofle bird or as part of a crowd gathered around a street artist waiting to see what’s being created.

The creation of art has always captivated audiences and as we watch a whiteboard video our brains are constantly trying to anticipate what’s coming next, when the final form or message is revealed to us the brain experiences a sense of surprise and satisfaction and releases dopamine, the pleasure chemical which in turn increases our engagement.

As a result of their success in engaging an audience, whiteboards go on to be three times more likely to be shared, a vital component to the impact of video marketing activities for businesses and organisations.

    

HAVE FUN, LEARN MORE... 

One of the key reasons that Dr Wiseman cites for whiteboards being so effective is quite simply fun!... Animations are fun, in fact it’s fair to say that video itself is a lot more fun for your website visitors at least, than having to wade through all that text. 

Dr Wiseman noted that “We do anything better when we’re in a good mood … creativity, productivity, learning. … One thing whiteboard animations do is make me laugh, and it puts me in a good mood … Suddenly, it’s not so much work. It not only makes the viewer have a better time, but more importantly it means the information is going in.” 

Naturally for those looking at making use of video in a commercial setting, be it promotional and marketing videos, explainer videos or perhaps internal training videos fun cannot be the only reason to choose a whiteboard animation - but add the huge improvements in information retention and memory with the way they can engage your audience and you have a winning combination.

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