# Founder video on a subscription offer page: fewer people continued

- Outcome: Lost
- Page type: Landing page (SaaS)
- Elements: Video
- Test run by: [MECLABS](https://liftarchive.com/practitioners/meclabs/)
- Commentary by: LiftArchive (our analysis, not theirs)
- Original source: https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/does-a-video-offer-increase-or-decrease-conversion
- Page: https://liftarchive.com/test/gap-meclabs-founder-video-subscription-offer/

Adding 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.

## Result

**fewer people continued**

- 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.

## 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)

- 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.

## How to run this test

- 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
- Guardrail: Video play rate and play errors
- Guardrail: Page load time
- Guardrail: 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.

---

Credit: MECLABS ran this test and owns the result. Summary and commentary by LiftArchive (https://liftarchive.com/test/gap-meclabs-founder-video-subscription-offer/).
Usage: Free to use, quote and build on, with credit and a link: name the practitioner or organization that ran the test and link to its LiftArchive page. The results belong to the practitioners who ran and shared them; the summaries and commentary are LiftArchive's.