There is no lack of case studies that demonstrate video has a positive impact on conversion rates, sometimes a very dramatic improvement. (The most dramatic I’ve seen is eBags, claiming 138% increase in conversion. There’s also evidence that the mere presence of video can improve conversion, whether the video actually is viewed or not.
While conversion is often the de facto KPI to measure, because the customer cannot reap the benefits of a product video without interacting with it, a video’s “view through rate” (VTR) should not be overlooked. VTR is the number of videos watched divided by the number of impressions (number of times a page loaded with a video.) If you can optimize for VTR, you’ll likely improve your conversion rate as well.
To answer the question “How can an online retailer maximize View Through Rate?”, the folks at Invodo, a video ecommerce platform, conducted a study across 53 of its own customers. With an average of 138 product videos per site, the study tested 7,413 product pages. (Invodo has granted us permission to share the study results on Get Elastic. You can download the full report from Invodo’s web site).
To answer the research question, 4 hypotheses were tested:
Hypothesis 1: Placing video above the fold results in a greater View Through Rate than video below the fold
Hypothesis 2: View Through Rate declines with an increasing number of elements competing for clicks on the page
Hypothesis 3: Adding a video with a text call to action increases View Through Rate
Hypothesis 4: Increasing the size of the video player increases View Through Rate
Results
Hypothesis 1: Placing video above the fold
Though usability pundits profess that you don’t need to worry about the fold, (the fold refers to the bottom of a user’s computer screen, whatever portion is visible without scrolling down), video players above the fold achieved an average 25.7% VTR versus 15.1% VTR for players below the fold. That’s a 70% increase!
Hypothesis 2: View Through Rate declines with an increasing number of elements competing for clicks on the page
This test had mixed results – while videos on pages with only 1-5 and 6-10 clickable elements outperformed pages 11-15 and 15-20 competing calls to action, the surprise was that pages with over 21 clickable items had the highest view throughs, an average of 26.4%.
Why might this be? It could be that the more cluttered a page is, the more the prominent elements (like a shiny video player) stand out.
Hypothesis 3: Adding a video with a text call to action increases View Through Rate
Though most folks understand you can click a Play button to get a video started, showing a text call-to-action (think “click to play” or similar) achieved a 23.9% VTR versus 21.4% without.
Hypothesis 4: Increasing the size of the video player increases View Through Rate
Pages with full-sized video players outperformed those with smaller players 22.5% to 19.0%. Not surprising, since larger product images and add to cart buttons also have a reputation for converting better.
Other testing ideas
It’s not just the presence of video that influences shoppers, it’s also the presentation of it. If you’ve only tested conversion rates for the presence of video against the absence of video – you’re not done testing. View Through Rate is a metric you measure when comparing design element against design element, and there are an infinite number of elements you can test for continual improvement.
Other elements you could test to improve VTR include:
- Video thumbnail images
- Show video play length
- Autoplay the video on mute (with option to turn restart and turn on sound)
- Show video headline
- Video headline copy tests
- Show caption below video
- Caption copy tests
- YouTube player vs. other embedded player/custom (YouTube advantage is views on your website count toward the plays/popularity on your YouTube channel)
- Test alignment (left, center, right) of player
I’d love to hear your testing ideas (and case studies) in the comments!
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You mentioned that VTR is the number of videos watched, and then the anomaly of more elements on the page having a higher VTR. I wonder how much time a person has to spend on a video to qualify it as being “watched”.
It would be interesting to break down the VTR into groupings based on length of time spent on the video — perhaps as a percentage of the video length.
Another thought was in the case of static thumbnails, I wonder whether there are some good guidelines on what types of images/frames might impact VTR, or anything about the frame text title that had an effect on the VTR.
Nice post, Linda!
@Jonathan, yes, you can absolutely segment that with your video analytics (provided you have video analytics). This would give you additional insights, and it’s interesting to correlate completed videos with purchases.
Because the thumbnail image certainly has an impact on the attractiveness of the call-to-action – a good element to test. I haven’t seen any hard, fast best practices for thumbnail images, if you come across any research, please share.
Jonathan,
I couldn’t agree more that quantifying time watched is key. If we break viewers into buckets based on how long they watch, and we track conversion among those groups, we can test different lengths of video and understand the optimal length to drive conversion. There’s information out there now on viewing times, but it’s not ecommerce-specific and not tied to conversion. That’s a direction for some further research we hope to deliver in Q2/Q3.
Thanks Russ. Definitely a fertile area for interesting studies!
From the comment about video length, I was thinking it would be interesting to see the difference between one long video that addresses several aspects of the product, say 2-4 minutes, versus 6-8 small videos, each focused on a specific aspect of the product/target.
Hello Linda,
An outstanding post, including comments, I have just started creating my first video for one of my websites and from my basic research; videos that get the most play are the ones that can deliver their message/call to action in less than 1.5 minutes. As I said this is my first production and I’ve decided to go with a part 1 and part 2 format of about 1.5 minutes each.
Again thanks for posting this information…
Best,
Roy
Remember: Failure is success, if you learn from it.
We saw a negative correlation between View-Through-Rate and Conversion Rate. I think we need to remember that for commerce sites VTR is not an end to itself.
Hello,
Thank you for the article, very interesing, especial in case of percents cos our results is same.
In 2007 we invented new model of advertising and in particular VTR.
You can find our math model there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View-through_rate.