There are four different types of learning styles that reflect a combination of learning types in people. Those types are:

• visual
• auditory
• tactile

People gravitate towards a set combination of these types together, the four types are:

• The Reflector: prefers to think about what they’re learning
• The Activist: learn by doing
• The Theorist: likes to understand how what they’re learning fits into a previous framework.
• The Pragmatist: care about how it will work in the real world

You may be wondering why I’m listing these in a blog post about explainer videos and their effectiveness on your audience. I’m listing them because they are significant to your website’s conversion rate on consumers choosing to spend their money on your product.

The average attention span of internet users in 2015 clocked in around 8 seconds. That is less than the average attention span of a goldfish. That means when you have video content on your site these days, it better be engaging, and quickly, or your user is bound to move on quickly as well and not open their wallet.

The other side of the coin, where the above learning styles come in, is that videos can be a powerful tool for conversion because they provide a combined set of learning styles together for added impact when someone is contemplating your product or service. This increases retention and learning in your potential customers.

People’s average watch time on internet videos clock in around 2.7 minutes, however, if crafted correctly, you can bump that average up on your own content. The way to do that is to follow a few rules that tend to work well:

1. Create content that is honest, positive and seeks to help your client solve a problem they have, not tell them they must buy your product for some silly reason unrelated to what you are doing.
   

   ---

2. If it makes sense, craft the content with a sense of humor.
   

   ---

3. Animated videos tend to do a great job at showing abstract, or hard to understand concepts with certain types of businesses. Those with hard to grasp concepts like computer software, or complex products  like engineering solutions, or complex scientific processes may be best explained through animation.

Although lots of explainer video companies post metrics online about conversion rates. I don’t because a lot of these same places do not list their source, as it’s mostly internal data. However there is evidence that video does increase attention span on the web more than words.

To gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds.

Youtube is the second largest social network in the world, and there is a reason for this; human beings are naturally attracted to movement, we are very visual creatures. So it makes sense that engaging more than one sense at a time would keep someone’s attention longer.

However as of 2014 – 300 hours of content are uploaded to Youtube every minute. So just because you have a video on the internet doesn’t mean you are converting customers. You have to keep a few things in mind; proper placement, effective marketing, and focusing on creating great content that connects you with your audience.

Internet surfers have a different kind of problem in regard to content: so many great articles, not enough time.

For this reason people have less patience when researching websites and products. They want to understand what your product is, and they want the information right now – not after being forced to read through scrolling pages of text on your website. This is why explainer videos have become one of the most effective forms of content that brands can publish.

Besides the fact that a great explainer video can do all of this about a minute and a half, the truth is that on the whole videos tend to  generate more interest than written text or even photos. But the caveat there is “great”. Content is king, and crafting your message well is part of selling your service or product to customers. If the video falls flat and doesn’t engage your customer withing 10 seconds, they will probably quickly leave your site.

A study published by MyCustomer.com said consumers are 39% more likely to share and 56% more likely to ‘like’ online video than text articles. Furthermore, shoppers are more than 27 times more likely to click on an online video ad than standard banners and nearly 12 times more likely to click on video ads than rich media.

Good luck out there! If you need an explainer video expert, or a multimedia art mercenary, we’re always available to help. Get in touch: christina@yonyonderstudio.com