Founder video on a subscription offer page: fewer people continued
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsAdding a video of the founder explaining the product to a subscription offer page lowered the share of visitors who moved through the sign-up steps.
MECLABS ran the test for an online subscription product and published it on MarketingExperiments in December 2006. The exact numbers were only shown in a chart image, so we can't give a percentage.
- Progress through the subscription steps: lower for the video page than for the page without video. This is a loss.
- Exact percentages: not shared in text. The source shows them only in a funnel chart image.
- Visitors who did watch the video were much more likely to continue, according to the MECLABS team. That is an observation about a self-selected group, not a separate test result.
The change
The variant adds a founder video explaining the product to the offer page.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
The subscription offer page explained the product with text and graphics only. There was no video.
Variant
The same offer page added a video of the company's founder walking through the product and its benefits.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- Some visitors could not play the video or hear the sound, so they missed the main pitch, which now sat inside the video.
- Moving key selling points into a video makes them invisible to anyone who skips it. Text on the page reaches everyone who scrolls.
- The people who watched were probably already more interested, which would explain why watchers converted better even though the page as a whole did worse.
Caveats: The numbers appear only in a chart image, and sample size, duration and confidence are not shared. The test is from 2006, when video playback was far less reliable than today.
Who ran it
MECLABS ran this test for an online subscription product (MECLABS research partner) and published the results (MarketingExperiments). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on MECLABS →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we add a short founder video to our offer page while keeping the key points in text, then more visitors will start a subscription because the video adds trust without hiding the pitch from people who don't watch.
- Primary metric
- Share of offer-page visitors who complete the subscription
- Guardrails
- Video play rate and play errors
- Page load time
- Progress to the next sign-up step
- Who should test it
- SaaS and subscription businesses with a founder-led story and an audience that can easily play video. It probably won't help if the video replaces the written value proposition or loads slowly for your visitors.
Questions
Does adding a video to a landing page increase conversions?
Not always. In this MECLABS test the page with a founder video converted worse, largely because some visitors couldn't play or hear it. Test it rather than assume it helps.
Should the main pitch live inside a video?
It's risky. Anyone who skips the video or can't play it misses the pitch, so keep the core value proposition in text on the page as well.
Why did people who watched the video convert better?
Watchers are a self-selected group who were likely more interested already.
Their higher rate doesn't prove the video caused the difference.