
What's that? - veb
http://spottedsun.com/videos/
======
runako
I actually think it's not respectful of visitors' time to only describe your
site in a video. I know, it's only 30 seconds, but that's about 25 seconds
longer than it takes me to read a short text description. And if I need to
find my headphones, it's not 30 seconds anymore.

What's wrong with writing, anyway?

~~~
seldo
Enthusiastically seconded. Nothing makes me hit the back button faster on a
startup/app website than a mostly-empty page with a video on it. Especially
when the video is just a close-up of somebody's face talking, i.e. there's
nothing that requires a video to demonstrate.

~~~
romansanchez
I'm curious if videos really do scare people away. If you take a look at
dropbox and cloudflare they do a really good job at using a video to
demonstrate their product. Now taking into consideration the size of dropbox's
and cloudflare's users, I'm more inclined to the idea that "videos work".

~~~
nhebb
It's not that videos scare people away, but they need to be augmented. Would
Dropbox convert better if they had descriptive text on their home page, or at
least made the features link more visible than the one in the footer? We'll
never know unless Dropbox tests it and publishes the results.

When I think of software sold to businesses, I'm reminded of the place I used
to work where the president had the IT department disable the speakers on all
new PC's. He didn't want employees sitting around watching videos or listening
to music on company time. It may be hard to fathom for some people, but there
are offices where playing videos (even demos) is frowned upon - especially in
a cube farm.

If you want to make conversions, think of all the barriers between you and the
sale, and start knocking them down one by one. Making your products key
features readable and crawl-able for search engines is an easy one.

~~~
kami8845
As someone from the affiliate space where EVERYTHING gets splittested I can
tell you that videos generally own all other forms of website content when
trying to get the user to do something (download, signup, buy).

>Would Dropbox convert better if they had descriptive text on their home page,
or at least made the features link more visible than the one in the footer?
We'll never know unless Dropbox tests it and publishes the results.

of course DB tested their homepage a ton

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lucb1e
And while we're on it, make sure websites are operable by keyboard too (tab
and enter, mostly). What for? Visually impaired people.

I know someone who is totally blind, has worked with MS-DOS while he could
see, but got blind before Windows 3.1 even came out. Yet he works with and
version of Windows, sends and reads email, searches videos on Youtube, and
browses the web. That last one is becoming more and more tricky with div-
onclick="location=somewhere;" (instead of a-href) and other Javascript all
over the place.

Screen readers are made to read text. Flash is hard but sometimes possible,
Javascript is becoming a good competitor to Flash in the sense of that it's
rendering the web almost as inaccessible.

Images too are a problem of course, without alt attribute they are totally
worthless to blind people.

So if you want to present something to the entire market, be sure to have
either an accessible website or a mobile version, both preferably in the local
language (you should hear how Dutch text to speech software reads English,
sounds more like Chinese--literally). And there are about 160 million people
blind around the world, even if only a tenth of that speaks English and has
internet access, that are 16 million people. Nearly as much as the entire
population of the Netherlands.

~~~
dredmorbius
As with the captioning recommendation, enhancements for disabled users are
also huge wins with both many other users, and, very often, search engines.

I don't know that search engines use tab order to parse fields, but they very
well might and could.

I know that especially when it comes to web-based admin tools, something that:

1: Works well with keyboard navigation.

2: Works (at all) in a console-mode browser.

... is going to get a hell of a lot more interest from me than something
which:

1: Doesn't readily support keyboard nav.

2: Doesn't work in a console-mode browser.

3: Requires Flash.

4: Requires some specific/minimum browser version/release.

5: Requires MSIE.

From 3 onwards, these are instant death for any enterprise tool I'm
evaluating.

~~~
lucb1e
Very true, I would also prefer something that works even in a text based
browser. I've never really 100% fit in with the user standard, being one of
the first to browse the web from my mobile phone (Nokia 6230i back then) or
using alternative browsers when MSIE's market share was still >90%. I've had
more than enough compatibility trouble to go along with something working on
only some systems.

(For example I'm currently building a website which will also support
everything from high-end desktops to text-based terminals. Only disqus
comments are a pain, making the page size go from 23KB to over 500KB and
requiring Javascript, but the tradeoff seems worth it--trust me, I thought it
trough over and over and over lol.)

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thechut
This is a huge problem! I did some work for the Assistive Technology Industry
Association (ATIA) and video is very inaccessible. This is a problem not only
for people with bad or impaired hearing. Imagine trying to figure out what a
video was trying to demonstrate if you were blind!

W3C has created the Web Acceptability Initiative (WAI) with the goal of
creating a common set of web standards so that all people can access content.
Check out the WAI homepage for best practices and code examples:
<http://www.w3.org/WAI/>

~~~
read_wharf
I have a feeling I might use the "accessible" version of a page more
regularly, if it were widespread enough for people like me who don't need it
to be aware of it.

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raldi
And even if you don't care about people who are hard of hearing, think about
those of us who are at work, or in a public place, and don't have a pair of
headphones available.

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gus_massa
I'm not hearing impaired, but my first language is Spanish. I can read almost
anything in English, but sometimes it is difficult for me to understand fast
spoken English. So, if you care about international users, you also should add
captions to the videos.

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tzaman
This is actually not a rant - it's a wake up call.

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FrancescoRizzi
You, sirs and/or ladies have my thanks for bringing this up. You have my vote
on this one, no questions asked.

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ryanbales
We just released an app intro video at Budgetable <http://budgetable.com> ...
Adding captions didn't even cross my mind, but we'll do it.

~~~
heretohelp
Your site gets a no, there's not enough immediately visible copy for me to
determine if the value prop is worth my time.

You will never have me as a customer unless you move the video to a non-index
page and instead lead in with copy+visuals. Offer a _link_ to the idea for
people who want the audiovisual explanation instead.

~~~
ryanbales
Hmm... I have to disagree with you here. There is a title and a subtitle above
the video. Those two elements provide enough information for the user to
determine if they want to watch the video. Captions would still be a plus,
though.

~~~
heretohelp
They're your customers to lose.

Prove me wrong and A-B test it against some good textual copy. Track actual
conversions.

Use these guys as inspiration without stealing their design like those
boneheads from a month or two ago: <http://campfirenow.com>

~~~
ryanbales
And if I win, you'll sign up for Budgetable? ;)

~~~
heretohelp
No, but if I win, I'll revisit your site and read the actual copy and you'll
get a chance at a customer.

Regardless of the outcome, _you_ win because now you have actual data to make
a decision with.

For me to agree to sign up that your AB test wins, I'd have to proctor the
test and at that point, you'd owe me for consulting services.

~~~
ryanbales
Oh, it's on

------
welp
I'm profoundly deaf, and wish I had thought of making this post. I've lost
track of the number of times I have been put off a product because their only
description is in video form.

I sometimes forgive start-ups for not captioning videos, but I think it's
inexcusable when a large multinational corporation publishes a video with no
captions -- especially if they pay for live captioning for employees in
meetings (e.g., by using <http://www.captionfirst.com/>).

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john2x
And for those who have a slow connection, a video is just a big back button.
(speaking from experience)

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geuis
I'm very confused about why this story has so many votes. spottedsun.com
doesn't even resolve for me.

~~~
skeletonjelly
Can you pastebin your nslookup/dig results? Try directing it at another dns
8.8.8.8

nslookup spottedsun.com 8.8.8.8

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scintill76
At first I was annoyed with the non-descriptive title, but I clicked it anyway
to see what it was. I don't know if it was intentional, but the title helps
convey how useless audio is to people who can't hear.

And even as a non-hearing-impaired person, I concur with the request for
subtitles and/or not using videos so much because they waste time.

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dhotson
If a video has captions I often prefer to watch it muted. I'm not even hearing
impaired. Sound is overrated. ;-)

