The “onboarding” experience is like a tour of your company. The average person doesn’t know the fine details of your products. They don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring them out, and if you don’t grab them early, they may take their business elsewhere.
What exactly is onboarding?
It is getting visitors to your site familiar with your products and services, and getting them on board with your brand.
A bad onboarding experience will make visitors to your page uncomfortable and frustrated to the point they may hit that dreaded X and close your site’s tab.
A good onboarding experience makes your new visitors to the site feel at ease. If they don’t know your company, you need to give them a brief rundown of your personality as a company to make the visitor say, “yeah, these guys look good.”
A perfect onboarding experience will spark something within the visitor. New users may only spend a minute or two on your site, but if they like what they see, they’ll remember you and come back when they’re ready for what you offer.
Show the people behind the scenes.
People like assigning a face to a brand. Whether that’s your front-of-house staff or a call centre, knowing that real humans are working behind the scenes is comforting for visitors. You can shoot a simple introduction video with your staff CEO, or just a charismatic employee to welcome visitors.
Let someone else do the talking
You can tell your customers all day how great your product is, and that may be true, but they are far more likely to believe it if it’s coming from someone outside of the company. Testimonial videos are a great way to show potential customers the positive outcomes they could have by using your product or service. Use people that have authority in their field to say all those nice things about your product, it will give you instant credibility.
Demonstrate
You can also use video as a powerful tool to demonstrate your product. It is a whole lot easier to show your products’ features than it is to describe them. Use demonstration videos with a professional presenter or a staff member who is comfortable in front of the camera to use your product and showcase its positive aspects quickly and in a visually appealing way. If you’re more tech or software-focused, you can use screen captures to keep it simpler.
Know your audience
One of the best aspects of using video for onboarding is the range of tools at your disposal. You can get view counts heat maps, info on how far people are making it through your videos before they tune out.
By analysing this data, you can identify if people need more explanation of the product, and you can see if your video gets bogged down if a lot of people turn off at a certain point. By understanding your visitors’ habits, you can learn a lot for future product videos by avoiding those things that turn people away.
Ryan Spanger is one of Melbourne’s most respected and sought-after video production professionals. Ryan founded Dream Engine in 2002, and specialises in helping medium to large corporates, government departments, and the non-profit sector to connect with their audience more effectively by using video.
