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How to Increase Click Through Rate (CTR)
How to Increase Click Through Rate (CTR)

How to ensure more and more viewers click on your text, image or hotspot annotations

Patrick Farley avatar
Written by Patrick Farley
Updated over a week ago

The text, image, and hotspot annotations are used most often to create simple and compelling Calls to Action (CTAs) on top of your video. The goal is to let the viewer take the next step in their journey and click through to a landing page, website, another video, pdf, etc. etc....

So optimizing these Calls so Action to that the highest percentage of viewers click them is in everyone's best interest.

Benchmarks for CTR

HapYak has run a few studies across our data, platform-wide. We typically see click through rates in the 10% - 12% range across all annotations on all videos. So off the bat, video CTAs get 4x - 10x higher click through rates than traditional web CTAs.

It's important to note that there is high variability across these CTRs depending on industry, length of video, and a host of other variables. This is similar to the variability seen on Landing Page CTAs in general.

Peak CTR - "Landing Videos"

Some CTAs we've seen have been 50%, 60% or 70% and higher. These are typically on:

  1. Short videos with the expressed goal of a click through. Just like a landing page, these "landing videos" are typically short, sweet and to the point - often one minute or shorter.

  2. Have clean backgrounds, free from distraction. This provides a clean canvas from which the CTA will stand out.

  3. Have the person in the video explicitly refer to the CTA visually with a gesture or glance.

  4. Have the person in the video explicitly invite the viewer to click.

Here's an ideal example from Brightcove...

In this example they use techniques 1, 2 and 4 to perfection. In addition they: 

  • Include a subtle but powerful motion effect to the CTA using this technique.

  • Include a shine effect which draws the eye of the viewer.

  • Use a primary, simple call to action and allow the viewer to take a secondary step of filling out the form once they are committed to interaction. This is easy to do with the custom form annotation.

CTR Optimization for All Videos

Not all videos are produced with interactivity in mind (like the example above). Rather you may want to add a CTA to dozens or hundreds of videos and get clicks on all of them. To optimize these:

  1. Use templates to apply the same CTA to all videos. This ensures you get the most views and clicks on the CTA to see enough data to detect a difference between different versions.

  2. Copy the template and make a change to one property of the copy (the color, the start time, the duration, etc...). This easy A/B test allows you to iterate and improve over time.

  3. Set the start time to between 3 - 10 seconds. This gives the viewer time to commit to the video but allows them to take the next action before they drop off.

  4. If you want the CTA to appear "at the end of the video" do not put it right at the end. Rather put it 20 seconds before the end of the video. Viewers are great at sensing a video is about to end and rarely stick around for the final 2% of it. Simply put "-20" as the start time and the CTA will appear 20 seconds before the video ends (no matter the duration). Pretty cool, right!? Also, effective.

  5. Set the duration to "Until the end of the video." This ensures the CTA is on screen at the moment the viewer is ready to click.

Summary

There is no standard benchmark for video CTR. But you should aim for CTRs that are an order of magnitude higher than those on a landing or web page.

Videos are ideal for capturing a viewers attention. Once that first click on "play" is made the video does the work for you and primes the viewer to take that next step in their journey. If most of these techniques are followed they will lead the viewer to make the "second click".

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