The 3 Reasons your Business Needs an Explainer Video By Shea Harris
1st August 2014

This post is by my friend Shea Harris who is the creator of WebsiteWhiteboards.com. I was very impressed with his work  and reached out to him for a guest post. Happily he obliged. I do hope you get an opportunity to work with him. Cheers - Ron. 

Over to Shea... Don't have an explainer video? Wait, you don't know what an explainer video IS?

Well, an explainer video is a short, fun, animated video that, yes,explains something. For example, it could explain your service in a fun and easy to understand way. They tend to fall into two styles: whiteboard animation and cartoon explainer. You've probably seen quite a few and you just didn't know that they were called explainer videos! Here are a few explainer video samples 

We all know they are fun to watch, but you're probably asking, 'WHY should I get one?' ? Well, here are the three HUGE reasons why you should have an explainer video for your own business

1) Explainer Videos Increase Audience Engagement They do more than just give your website engagement a boost. Check out these numbers:

• 60% of visitors to a site watch a video before reading any text
• Sites with videos get 100% more views and 30% more clicks than those without

Research shows that you have about 8 seconds to grab the attention of a visitor before they click that little X in the corner of the screen and are gone forever. Le's face it, our attention spans seem to be getting shorter. Explainer videos grab your visitors?€? attention immediately. Just think about your own experience when you visit a website. When you see a video on a site don't you want to give it a watch? 

2) Explainer Videos Increase Conversion Rates (More Sales!) When a visitor on your site watches your video, they've already made a bit of a mental investment and have spent much more time than average on your site. After viewing your video they've been entertained and have a better understanding about what you're all about. That means they're much more likely to start clicking around your site and actually contact you and/or make a purchase. Don't believe me? Research shows that:

• Site visitors who view a video stay on average 2 minutes longer and are 64% more likely to buy
• Videos have been shown to increase conversion rates on websites by up to 75%
• 75% of viewers on video sites such as YouTube visit a marketer's website after watching their video

3) Explainer Videos Boost Search Rankings Actually, videos themselves tend to outrank websites. Think about all the times you've searched Google and see a YouTube video on the first page of results. These videos are much easier to rank than a website. People also do a whole lot of searching on YouTube. If you have a channel with videos there you'll get plenty of viewers. And like the stat shows in the last section, people are likely to visit your site after watching your video. A few more numbers:

• Sites with video are 50 times (WOW!) more likely to show up on the first page of Google
• Sites with video are 53% more likely to be ranked first by Google
• Videos in search results get 41% more clicks than text listings

Yeah, as you can see it's really a no-brainer. You really should have an explainer video for your business. Right now there doesn't seem to be another marketing method that's as effective, and the effectiveness of explainer videos is forecasted to keep trending upward for the next several years. If you'd like to discuss further what an explainer video could do for your business, contact Shea Harris of WebsiteWhiteboards.com at shea@websitewhiteboards.com or (325) 227-7409.