all posts tagged “statistics”
Online Videos, Testimonials and Conversion Rates
Posted by: leelefever on February 19, 2009- 4:00pm
Categories: business, marketing, statistics, video
It's too easy to just put up a web page and hope for the best. I can certainly attest to this practice for most of Common Craft's existence. However, as we've moved into ecommerce and built some traffic, I've become much more data oriented and learned more about things like "conversions" and "A/B testing."
Many web-based businesses have the same goal: drive traffic to your web site and then convert that traffic into some desired action. This is called conversion - converting traffic to sales, contacts, newsletter sign-ups, etc. is a big deal and something that's important to understand.
I've been keeping an eye out for data on how videos work in this process. My guess was that video is an asset - if you can get people to watch a video about your product or service, they may be more likely to take an action.
I recently spoke with my friend Chris Savage at Wistia.com, who is very data-oriented. Wistia is a start-up that makes it easy to privately/securely share videos and measure the results. Wistia uses videos on a number of their pages and I asked Chris about the impact of videos in terms of conversion. His response:
We consistently get 3-4x better conversion ratios when we have videos on a page. Visitors convert in less time and there tend to be more opportunities.
Andrew Angus, who runs Switch Web Video (a member of our Explainer Network), recently wrote a blog post on the impact of testimonials on conversion rates and included some information about the role of video as well.
If you have a video on a webpage you are much much more likely to convert that visitor to a lead as compared to a normal web page. I have seen figures that show video landing pages convert 2 times to 6 times better then a normal webpage.
Andrew wanted to find out how much testimonials matter on landing pages - the first page a visitor sees. So, he set up two landing pages, one with testimonials and one without. Thanks to Google's Website Optimizer, he was able to test one page vs. the other (called A/B testing). Andrew's results:
The page with testimonials on it beat the competition by 158%! That blew me out of the water and is a huge difference for the business. Just think about it… rather than 7 people out of a 100, a much larger 17 out of 100 would contact us. This changes the game for our business and means we are much busier since we started using this new landing page.
So, I think there are a couple of lessons here:
1. Video may play a positive role in giving people a way to learn about your product and take the desired action.
2. Take a look at your "landing page" - the page that people see first, and consider how video and testimonials can help your conversions.
Of course, I must provide a shameless plug for the members of the Common Craft Explainer Network, who can help you create short and simple video for your landing page.
Yay! I just noticed that we've reached a statistical milestone. For the first time, a video we produced "Google Docs in Plain English" has reached the 1 million view mark on You Tube. This is our first 7 figure view count on You Tube, or any single site (other Common Craft videos have over 1m views across multiple hosts).
We were hired by the Google Docs team to make this video back in the summer of 2007. Obviously, the Google brand and placement on http://docs.google.com helps a lot. We're so proud to have worked with Google on this - it's a product we use every single day. Here's the video:
I must admit that each time we post a new video, we go into buzz mode - What are people saying/linking/doing? Where are they doing it? How many said something? What do we need to say in response?
Watching the reaction is something I anticipate and love about the process. At the same time, I wonder if I'm doing it right. I'm always looking for new ways to scan the web. Here are some tools we use - please suggest ideas/sites/tools that you think would help.
Blog Comments - Of course, our blog is the home of the videos, so we pay close attention to the comments. We've seen the number of comments per video decline in general, which I don't take as a bad sign. Personally, I think people are commenting in other ways, like on Twitter.
Blog Post Views - The views that the blog post receives are certainly a powerful indicator. However, because the video exists on video hosts, these page views are not comprehensive.
Referrers - Our blog software (Drupal) tracks referrers - sites sending traffic our way. This is one way to see the sites from which the most traffic is coming.
Google Analytics - On a high level, this is how we measure the overall impact of the video over time. It's a very powerful tool and we look at a number of the stats, but the big one is impact over time - did the video increase views/visits? For how long? To what degree?
Video Hosts - The views and ratings (and to a lesser degree comments) on the video hosting sites like You Tube and Vimeo are always useful in measuring traction, etc. You Tube has been our vehicle for having the video shared on blogs, though that may soon change.
Technorati Reactions - We have a persistent Technorati search for "commoncraft.com." Whenever someone links their site to Common Craft it (hopefully) shows up in a Technorati search. This gives us a view of who is linking to us, what they're saying and how influential they are. Often, this is how we identify discussions in which we should participate. We use Technorati every day.
Diggs - When a new video is posted, we usually include a button with the video that allows people to Digg it. We've seen this produce amazing results, but only if the video makes it to the "popular" list and the front page. Otherwise, it almost seems like a distraction. You have to be pretty provocative to get the Digg community's attention.
Del.icio.us Bookmarks - Bookmarks are another way we gauge popularity. Like Digg, if the bookmark can make onto the popular list, it can drive more traffic and bookmarks.
RSS Subscribers - This is more of a long range stat. We pay attention to how the number of subscribers changes in the days after the video is posted. This can be powerful conversion metric. If we're doing well, we turn a more and more visitors in subscribers.
Twitter @Replies - Twitter has become our #1 resource for understanding perceptions about our videos. We always announce the videos on Twitter and the @replies are our first look at what people think.
Twitter Search - I don't know what we would do without Summize and/or Tweetscan. We track the search results for "commoncraft " and "plain English " on these services. Often, this reveals how the videos are being spread through Twitter and what people are saying. When we see people asking questions, we do our best to reply to them.
Twitter Subscribers - Did we see more subscribers after the video?
Viral Video Countdown - These days, getting onto the Viral Video Countdown front page is a goal and we look for it with each video. It's one of our consistent, objective ways to see the degree to which the video is being shared on blogs. The Social Media video made it to #2 yesterday. Ice Rocket's Popular Video List is something we check too.
dotSUB translations - We share each of our videos on dotSUB, where they can be translated into multiple languages. We love to see this happen and check in often to how many languages are present.
What else should be using for tracking reactions?
Well, as of today it has been exactly one year since all this video craziness began. On April 22, 2007 we published RSS in Plain English. We never guessed these videos would take us so far - it was just a problem that begged to be solved. Did you ever see a blog post with the same name from 2004?
Since our work is in front of people often, we both feel a little self conscious in talking about the numbers behind the videos. We don't want to seem ostentatious or too self-promotional. But, at the same time, I think that exposing some of the figures provides context and hopefully examples of the power of Social Media.
So, let's take a look.
First, please note that the #s of views are rounded and cumulative across hosts. A single video exists in multiple places and those views are added together. These numbers comes from our accounts on You Tube, Blip.tv and dotSUB. We use other hosts, but these are our core.
Totals April 2007-April 2008:
Total views (including client work): 3.9 million views
Total views (excluding client work): 2.4 million views
Most viewed Client Video: Google Maps for Mobile 834,000 views (includes UK version)
Most viewed Show Video: RSS in Plain English: 755,000 views
Breakdown of Views by Video (Common Craft Show only):
RSS: 755,000
Wiki: 436,000
Social Networking: 207,000
Social Bookmarking: 205,000
CFL Lightbulbs: 53,000
Zombies: 280,000
Blogs: 169,000
Photo Sharing: 42,000
Twitter: 223,000
Podcasting: 5,000 (published 2 days ago)
Breakdown of views by host (Show only):
You Tube: 1.3 million views
Blip.tv (embedded on our site): 772,000
dotSUB: 300,000
Incoming Links from Blogs
We would not have become popular without bloggers. We've always aimed to create useful resources that bloggers can use to educate others. One way that we track usage by bloggers is Technorati.
According to Technorati (today) for CommonCraft.com:
Technorati Authority: 3,040 (incoming links over 6 months)
Technorati Rank: 170 (170th most linked-to)
Blog Reactions: 15,000+
Here's how "Blog Reactions" looks across videos (rank/authority isn't always available)
RSS: 462
Wiki: 786
Social Networking: 452
Social Bookmarking: 560
CFL Lightbulbs: 45
Zombies: 151
Blogs: 444
Photo Sharing:100
Twitter: 535
Podcasting: 34
Search Results
We've been surprised to appear on the first page of Google searches for these terms:
RSS
Wikis
Social Networking
Social Bookmarking
Zombies
Twitter
Our SEO secret? Make content people want to see.
Language Translations:
One of the resources that has been very important to us dotSUB - a free way for our videos to be translated into multiple languages via subtitles. We're so excited by these language figures:
RSS: 27 Languages
Wiki: 30 Languages
Social Networking: 25 Languages
Social Bookmarking: 18 Languages
CFL Lightbulbs: 12 Languages
Blogs: 20 Languages
Photo Sharing: 9 Languages
Twitter: 15 Languages
Podcasting: 4 Languages
So, this past year has been a blast and something we never expected. We just make the videos - you share with friends, you link, you view. We owe you - big time. That's what I love about the social web - everyone contributes a bit and those bits roll up to bring visibility to content that may have never been discovered otherwise. Thank you so much for an awesome year!
Would a Wiki By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?
Posted by: leelefever on July 24, 2007- 5:00pm
Categories: friends, language, statistics, Technology in Plain English, wiki
Did you know that in a recent survey by Harris Interactive that only 16% of the online public know what a wiki is? For some, this will seem surprising. Others will say "what's a wiki?"
I had coffee today with my friend Kevin Flaherty of Wet Paint, the Seattle-based wiki company. He told me that they were perplexed that "wiki" was deemed one the 10 most annoying words on the web, so they ask Harris Interactive to do the survey comparing "wiki" to the terms social network, blog and online forum. Here's what they found (full results here):
16% of the US online population is familiar with what a wiki is. Even if you just look at the online trendsetters (18-34 year olds), only 27% of those online users are familiar with wikis.
Blogs, which have universal awareness among nearly anyone reading this post, are only familiar to 35% of online users. And familiarity with social networks as a category still ranks below that of online forums at 28% and 35% respectfully.
For context, consider that 76% of the same population know of search engines and 97% of toilet paper.
What does this mean? It means that we're making assumptions about what people understand about our online world. There is more misunderstanding than understanding and more confusion than solution.
What really gets me about this is that wikis, RSS, social networks and blogs are all accessible and potentially useful for the general public - but they're not being adopted as quickly as we'd imagine. The culprit, from my perspective, is the language we use to describe and promote them. It's too easy to forget that we're in the minority.
My advice to promote more awareness is to stop talking like a brochure and tell a story. Don't talk about what your product is or does - tell people why they should give a damn. Use real world examples and show how a problem gets solved. Look at every word you use and consider the simpler options.
You might not earn the respect of programmers, but you might just turn your Mom onto something that will save her time - and we all need more time.
I have a hunch that the world of online community ROI is shifting. More data is available to support decisions and most importantly, it appears that businesses are placing less emphasis on ROI as a requirement for community projects.
Last week I had to miss what appears to have been a great event called the Online Community Business Forum. I've attended Forum One's Online Community Summits for years and always considered it time well spent.
A couple of friends, Joe Cothrel and Bill Johnston presented some data about our strange and wily friend - Online Community Return on Investment.
From the Online Community Report Summary of the Event ...
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Publicly available stats (compiled by Joe)
- Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)
- 43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004).
- Community users spend 54% more than non-community users (EBay, 2006)
- In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than forums and other web self-service options. (ASP, 2002)
- Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006)
- Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
- Community users have four times as many page views as non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).
- 56% percent of online community members log in once a day or more (Annenberg, 2007)
- Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. (Jupiter, 2006)
From the April 2007 ROI Survey:
- Only 22% of respondents had clear ROI Model
- 42% had staff of 1-5 people
- 49% Report Monthly to Mgmt
- Establishing ROI Model was a priority for most respondents in the near term
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Mukund Mohan also did a recent survey of developer communities with 112 respondants. One of the highlights regarding ROI was:
¾ (75%) don’t provide ROI information for their developer communities and don’t see the need from management to do so. One participant put it “Its so obvious what the ROI is that we don’t see the need to justify it�?.
Link to the summary file with charts and results.
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Dave Hersch of community platform company Jive Software shared his views recently in a blog posted titled "ROI ShmoROI"
I've been getting a number of reporters asking about the ROI behind an application like Clearspace lately. My general response is that it's a fool's exercise. Trying to determine if the savings and revenue increase are worth the expense is like trying to measure whether the view from atop Everest was worth the climb -- it's exceedingly hard to measure and it should be painfully obvious.
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Here's my perspective...
For me, ROI is important, but I think the equation should be flipped. One of my core beliefs is that, in the future, businesses will rely on their communities of customers to remain competitive.
In this context - what is the cost of not pursuing a community strategy? What will happen, over time, if community doesn't become a part of the organization?
The threat I see is the inability to remain competitive. If your organization doesn't treat their customers like a community and build those interactions into value, your competitors will. Your lack of a community strategy *now* may become a competitive liability in the future. You may be faced with competitors who save support cost, innovate more quickly and produce higher quality products because of their engagement and relationships with their customer communities.
In this way, the question becomes: what is the future cost of not pursuing a community strategy now?
I care about you, dear RSS reader and when another one of you subscribes to Common Craft - it makes my day. Like so many other people, I keep tabs on the count of subscribers Feedburner provides because I think it's a good measure of salience. That's why I'm so encouraged lately.
The last thing I wanted in the recent migration to Drupal was to leave any RSS subscribers behind by not migrating their feed over to the new site. In trying to ensure this I spent way too much time obsessing over things I don't fully understand (atom vs. rss vs. rdf). In the end, I discovered something: Feedburner was only hooked into one feed. In fact, my wife and a couple of friends were subscribed to the non-feedburner feed. Ack!
With the help of Lyal, my Drupal guy and Boris, we redirected the old feeds into Feedburner - and for the first time saw the actual subscriber numbers. To my delight, the subscriber number doubled the first day and then quadrupled from the original over two days. For the last three days it's been mostly static, so I think it's accurate now. Last week I saw myself as a three digit blogger - this week, I'm four. It's like a gift from the Internet, sorta.
If you're new to RSS, read: RSS in Plain English.
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