Improve Video Conversion Rates with A/B Testing

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In this episode of The Video Igniter Show, we’re teaching sales and marketing teams how to improve their video conversion rate.

If you have a question about improving your video conversion rate that isn’t answered in this article, you can use our contact form to ask your question or click the image below to with a member of our production team:

Episode 3 Transcript

How To Improve The Conversion Rate Of Your Marketing Video

Lots of marketers use A/B testing to improve their website and conversion rates. But rarely do people think about A/B testing the main video on their homepage.

The three most beneficial things you can A/B test in your video to improve its overall conversion rate are: Testing different thumbnails to see what gets more people to click play. You can test different introductions to see what hooks people into watching longer. And you can test different calls to action at the end of your video that people can click on like: ‘download our app’ or ‘sign up for a free account.’

I’ll start by showing you how to A/B test different thumbnails for your video. Then, I’ll explain how the same method can be used to A/B test other parts of your video.

Increase Your Video’s Play Rate

Another way you increase your video’s conversion rate is by increasing the number of people who click play on your video by testing different thumbnails.

To test your video thumbnail you’ll need two different thumbnails for your video that entice people to click play. You’ll also need two copies of your video uploaded to a video hosting site.

I recommend using Wistia because you can start using it for free. More importantly, their stats and analytics enable you to see what percentage of people who visit your site are clicking play on your video. They also tell you how long people are watching your video.

How to get more people to click play to watch your animated explainer video?

After you upload two copies of the video to Wistia, go to the customize section and upload Thumbnail A to the first copy of the video and Thumbnail B for the second copy.

Once that’s done, grab the embed code for Version A and Version B of your video because you’re going to need those in a second.

You’re also going to need to copy a small piece of code that randomly displays Version A to 50% of the people who visit your website and Version B to the other 50% of the people who visit your site.

Improve your video conversion rate with this split testing code

Use this code to split test variations of your video to see which version converts more viewers.

To set this up copy and paste the code into a document. In the first section of the code where it says delete this line replace with embed code for Video A delete that line and then paste in the embed code for Version A of your video. Then repeat this in the second section with the embed code for Version B. Finally take the whole piece of code and copy and paste it into your website in the place where your video is currently embedded.

Analyzing Your Video Optimization Data

That’s it now you can sit back and let your video run for a few days so it can collect some data. When you’re ready to review the stats and analytics to see which version gets more people to click play on your video search for a stat called, “Play Rate.” That’s the percentage of people who visit your website and click play on that version of your video.

Whichever version has a higher percentage of plays should become the default version of your video. When you’re confident you have a winner you could remove the code I had you add earlier and simply embed whichever version of your video has the higher play rate.

Improve Your Video’s Engagement Rate

Now, if you’re interested in A/B testing different intros for your video repeat the same steps however instead of uploading different thumbnails you’re going to upload two different versions of your video with different intros. Paste their embed codes into the special code like I showed in the first example. Then paste the whole thing onto your website. When you want to figure out which version keeps people watching your video longer, take a look at the stat called, “Average Engagement.” This tells you how much of the video your average viewer watches. Whichever version has the highest average engagement should become the default version of your video.

Increasing Your Video Conversion Rate

If you want to test different calls to action at the end of your video, upload two versions of your video that have different endings. You could test different ways to ask the viewer to sign up for a free account. Or maybe you want to test two completely different things like click here to download our app versus click here to watch another video and learn more.

In order to figure out which one people click on more, get the link for people to click on to download your app and the link for the page where people can watch the other version of your video to learn more and paste those links into a site called Bit.ly. That will shorten a link for you and it’s going to enable you to see how many times people click on that link. Next go into Wistia and in the customize section for each video add a clickable call-to-action at the end of each video. Then, paste in the appropriate Bit.ly link for your viewers to click on.

After your video has run for a few weeks take each of your Bit.ly links and add a plus sign (+) in front of them. Then, paste each link into your browser. These modified links will take you to pages that show how many times each link has been clicked. This way, you can determine which call-to-action is more effective.

That’s all for this episode. Thank you for watching. We hope you learned some new ways to improve your video conversion rate. If you want to support the show share it with someone who will find this useful and you can subscribe or like the content on any of these channels.

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