Video - to pause or not to pause...

I think it's a personal courtesy to give your viewers control of their video (pause, fast forward, rewind) as well as tell them how long the video will be (i.e. with a mouse scroll over). If you think in terms of the overall user experience, there's a percentage of viewers who want to skip right ahead to the offer and then come back to the "content". If you don't allow this option, you'll give a bad impression and they may not give you a second chance and just click away.

Another problem I see with a lot of product launches and forced video...no way to rewind. What if you've said something profound and I have no way to go back and replay except to refresh my browser and start over from the beginning.

I think forced video is tantamount to spam, personally.

Personally, I feel the exact same way. I HATE videos that start up automatically and have no buttons to pause or rewind and restart every time you load the page...

It's annoying as hell to me.

But I know that what I think and what the market reacts to are sometimes very different. That's why I'm looking for anyone who has tested this.

If I can't pause/stop a video then I close the page. No if's and's or but's.

Especially since most of the ones I've seen are just plain annoying, and the person's voice just gets on my nerves..

I can think of at least one in particular that I STILL, to this day, cannot get that annoying, slurring voice out of my head. It was brutal. I would NEVER even consider buying that product just because of how annoying it was. lol

Here is my opinion (backed by data but all situations are different).

It depends on the traffic source.

Where did they land from - direct, endorsed, from an e-mail to your own list, on an upsell?

I'll give you a very good example.

I just recently bought something from a fairly decent marketer and it had an upsell. The upsell had a video with a sales message and no controls except pause and play.

There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE that I was interested, and just wanted to fast forward to the end and decide - buy or not. But, he took way too much time to actually get to the offer.

He lost a sale!

I don't have time. I want to be able to go to the end of the sales message and see the offer and make a decision. On the upsell, I'm actually between what I've bought and the delivery so the decision process is much, much faster.

Giving control to your viewer should also help cut down on refunds (because they don't feel as manipulated which reduces "buyer remorse").

Take Care,

Sanjay

I have tested both ways and automatically always get better conversions for me!

The only person who has done that (and he does it rarely) that I'll accept a video from is Brendon Burchard. I know his info will be decent.

Anyone else, no. I hate it and recommend to my clients that they include the controller.

FWIW This past week I received several email from Frank Kern selling his newest thing and basically giving away MC2 as a bonus.

Interestingly Kern has now put a pause control on his videos, and a time bar so viewers know in advance how long the video is.

I suspect he has tested this. Maybe not.

:-Don

Dear SmokinHotTraci,

I have not tested as per your query, however all videos on my sites do autoplay
and since I use YouTube to do it, they can pause - and scan ( ff, rew ) the video.

I think
the length of the video
whether or not we can see the time remaining
and
how relevant is each minute of the video
would each be factors here.

I too have run into several videos which force the viewer to either WATCH ALL
or abandon. Some have timed links/buttons that appear as the video progresses.
But unless the video is really good for me from the start, I'm outta there.

I think a video should not be paused. It should run in continuation.