Why do paysites sell better without video previews?
 

I've been talking about this phenomenon and I'm trying to understand the psychology of the surfer in this regard. Why would a tour without a video preview (screen caps only) sell better than a tour with some really high quality video previews?

I'm about to switch my tour over...

My guess is that they are showing hardcore. It doesn't take much for a surfer to unload. Lock the farm down and stop giving it away on the tour.

Or stop allowing people to download your whole members area on a 3 day free trial and then upload it around the internet.

oh btw, fantastic man to use as your internet identity. I often wish I could have been him.... up until the syphilis of course.

most of the time trailers show too much
other times they suck and reveal to the surfer how worthless the scene is in the first place

so if this is the case by showing nothing you will have more curious people or more who may get tricked into buying

but I always found that if you have great scenes it is better to have video previews

btw what's your site? is it general hardcore? or something different?

Where are the stats on this? A lot of big programs have a ton of video on their tours as far as I've seen

Many factors can change this... even down to the unique affiliates traffic source. In general, trailers or samples, will help conversions.

But assume the videos actually suck, it's just normal hardcore-amateur porn. Showing them a tease, may turn them off when pictures and wording, is all that was needed.

Most tours trailers don't match the video types / sizes / quality in the members area. The trailer undersells what the members actually get.

And also because of the above, different issues take place between trailers on the tour and member areas that run through a CMS.

And finally, speed... trailer sizes, tour server speeds, general loading times increased... can all be major factors in making it so non - trailer tours, work better.

Interesting read. Want to tell me what you think of the video previews I've got up at GhettoThugs.com? I censored them as my initial intuition was to make them pay for what they want to see (the cock) and tease them by pixelating it, but honestly it seems to have had the opposite effect.

I'm trying to sort it all out now.

It might be a case of needing to sell the affiliate on promoting the program, versus actually benefiting conversion. I think a lot of webmasters have an idea of what they think will sell, and will be more inclined to promote what is in-line with their own perspective.

My top converting sites have no trailers at all. Second in line only have 1 trailer. Sites with tons of trailers convert the worst for me.

I think that's the problem with my site at the moment. I'm taking the previews down and re-designing the model's landing pages.

Well, that was interesting..

I have to admit, a straight guy looking at that, I wasn't turned on.. hahaha.

I ran a amateur boob site, no hardcore.. that's a hard sell as well. My advice would be, don't over think it and build 3-5 different versions of the tour, with various features. Then let your Affiliates choose and you find the sources that works best for each tour.

After several months, you will learn the key points from split testing various tours and might be able to build a master tour.

simply because you're playing with surfer's fantasy. When you show screencaps the viewer will try to connect the screencaps to a story or fantasy, which will be always pleasant. It's known as "law of closure", a basic principle of the Gestalt psychology theory: you try to complete the elements that are missing. In this case, the story going behind the pictures, the sex scene, the moaning, the screaming, whatever.

In a video, that fantasy is turned off and you see what it really is, and no matter what, it will always be worst than your ideal scene. That's why no preview tours works better than preview tours. Personally, I never, ever, ever saw a tour with previews converting better than a tour for the same site with no previews. If you choose the correct thumbs and screencaps (that means: following a logical story), your conversions can be 10x better easily. Of course, this alone won't guarantee success, there are many elements to keep in mind, but it's something to keep in mind nevertheless

This being said, I'm always asked to do tours with video previews. And I always tell people what I said above, but well, 90% of webmasters prefers preview no matter what, so I have to include previews. Plus, most webmasters don't use/like alternative testing tours, when you could easily have exactly the same tour, one with previews, one with the same preview going to join page. As easy as that.

Finally, we have the join page. If you're weak on your tour, you better have an amazing join page to balance the leaks in the tour.

For most adult webmasters, join page is an end instead of another step, namely, the most important of all the pages. So you see join pages which are just form holders, or a form and some screencaps. With that, you already cut at least 50% of sales. Period. When you see 100 people hit the join page (talking about tours with no blind links to join, ie tours with previews) and it converted to 1 or 2 sales, then you know something is extremely wrong. Either the program is shaving like mad, either the join page is a failure by definition. However, I rarely saw any webmaster worried about the most important page in the site. Gee, I've saw people more interested in warning pages than join pages (for real)

Fantastic post Harvey. Thank you.

I'm glad I could help. :)

Think it really depends and honestly most of us do not spend what we should on our trailers. If your going to use them you better spend top dollar getting them edited and composed.

Big example would be when collegefuckfest came out. The trailers made that site. Also pretty damn sure redshoe did them.

Thanks for the suggestion. :thumbsup

Some good info ITT

Man, I had trailers once looking like hollywood ones. I compared them to the simplest ones I could make, 15 secons long, 5 seconds for each "position". And the result? The same, no difference in ratios whatsoever. Removing trailers totally helped instantly.

Some interesting points brought up in this thread. I'm gonna remove video trailers for a couple weeks and see how it effects ratios. :thumbsup

It depends on the presentation.

For example, my tube pay site hybrid. The 30 second teaser is wonderful. They watch the teaser, and if they wanna sign up. They are already at the site. They just need to pay, and BAM full length. Plus they can see what they are getting for their money. Not the usual rip off pay sites with 50 scenes and never updated.

However, on the old style tour and pay site model. Not so much so. Robbie had a very intelligent, details, summation on this he posted some time ago. You may wanna look that up.

:bowdown:bowdown amazing post as usual :thumbsup

I thought about adding a video to the tour of my solo girl site, but I've got great conversion so why fuck with a good thing? We've all seen great tours where the girl comes across as annoying or non-sexual in her tour vid. My favorite terrible tour video here -> at anitablue dot com [cant post real link because i'm n00b]

Hi Harvey, you really know your stuff. Great advice. If you have time, could you check out our tours and tell us what you think of our teaser clips?

On our first site, http://www.theappletwins.com we have one teaser trailer hooked up, and then, when they click on the 2nd one, it brings them to the join page. The first trailer is weak, simple playboy style footage. I agree with your idea of no trailers at all, because it let's the imagination run wild, but we're still 50/50 on removing it. I think sometimes people want to see "something" to help them decide. But maybe not in our case?

On our 2nd site, same set up, http://www.thejolietwins.com , the trailer teaser is a little more wild, gets better at the end, so I think this trailer is more effective. I was thinking maybe to leave that one in and just pull the Apple teaser?? The apples have a nice kiss at the end, but what do you think?
Pull 'em both and the let the consumer's mind go wild, or leave them to let the consumer know what's inside?

Thanks for your time,
Leslie

good stuff harvey, a while ago i made the post below on this very topic, it was a reply to a thread BVF started

First let me start off by saying that I base my things on actual trial and error using mega amounts of traffic, I dont just post what I assume, so for those who plan on debating me please be someone who tried both ways vs just posting what you think should or shouldn’t work.

First off common sense would tell you that by adding a trailer, a good one obviously, that shows just enough to really tease should increase signups, well that’s exactly what I thought, I went ahead and started to get good trailers made up for all my sets.

Back when I started the idea of adding flash to a tour would be laughed at simply because of the load time it would take, I mean back then I would offer the members a 56k version of the movie to download.

So now that the speed issue is gone and flash can run on most computers I figured im about to really see my signups go thru the roof once im done redoing my tours with the trailers.

I did the same thing for my pay per view site, created trailers for each and every movie.

Once things where live there was a really noticeable drop in signups, I seriously was shocked, then I noticed a pattern that all the sites I push with trailers on the tour convert worse then those with just photos.

Now I can sit here and speculate why exactly this may be but here is what we have to remember, lets picture a surfer at his computer surfing porn.

Here is this guy sitting at his computer, here is the avg persons setup.

Has a cell phone next to him
Has at least one sort of Instant messaging app open (AIM YAHOO SKYPE ETC.)
Has some sort of email open, yahoo, hotmail, aol (aol software)
Has his myspace, facebook, twitter, youtube minimized as well

And now with all the above he made it to your site, maybe he found you on google maybe he found you on some TGP etc.

The more you let him browse around your site, figure the avg user will play 8 of your 30 second trailers, that’s 4 minutes right there + (sounds like a little time but it’s a long time), think about what can happen during this time to distract him? He can get a text, he can get a notice that he got a new mail now hes responding, maybe his phone rings, maybe he got a new message on myspace.

Think about yourself, how many times where you at a site putting to together a order of books or videos or clothing and then the next day you remind yourself you never ended checking out? Why? Because you got distracted, maybe you got an email, maybe you went to check out another site real quick and got distracted, maybe your browser crashed whatever.

My advice to anyone would be to do a test for a few days compare numbers, compare in google tracking the bounce rate etc.

great post!

too often in this business we think like webmasters/designers/builders and NOT like surfers....surfers these days have more choices, more distractions, tabbed browsers, etc. No one seems to be taking this into account...nothing much has changed...the standard tour format hasn't been changed/updated to take new changes into consideration in YEARS.

I'm working on some new things that will change along with current trends and technologies...this thread plus years of research is telling me I'm on the right track with what I'm doing...

Well, regarding Apple Twins, I think you're quite on track with that tour, although it's really ugly from a design POV (no offense) it's really catering to amateur audience. I'd just take off the big splash pics on the pictures page (those 4 vertical pictures) or make it way smaller. You'd even put the logo over the pics to save space, but that black part is the most important. Add some real text instead of images (for SEO purposes) and the amount of pics for each of those sets. Open the samples on a preview page instead of a jpg and include calls to action. Something simple like a logo, picture sample and join now link will be enough. Get the bottom row of 4 pics off, you need people to join and that's where the page ends. And finally, get rid of that "See our new pictorial" button since it's outdated and you're giving the message that you don't care enough

Video page: I don't see the trailer at all, dunno if you removed it, otherwise, I see no point in adding something that is hard to find anyway. The best element of the page (which, honestly, is quite good) is the content of that iframe... however, it's so small and with a scroll bar that once I paid close attention I realized it was there. Again, what's the point? Just remove the 2 rows of pics and include that iframe at the top or right below the black header. Just to be clear: the "added" text over the thumbs is what makes teh difference.

Join page: get rid of the top thumbs or make it smaller and with more thumbs. Everything else is perfect

about Jolie twins, more or less the same, just be sure to make the header way smaller in height and in video page I'd replace that upper area with the photos with the content of the iframe and that's it. No previews (they load really slow, by the time they finish you lost the surfer, like EscortBiz said)

I agree with everything you say. And as you may imagine, I also tested my ass off to come to these conclusions.

I'd like to stress the point of distractions, it's one of my eternal discussions with some clients. In marketing there's something called the "15 seconds rule": if you didn't make an impression in the first 15 seconds (good, bad, shocking, whatever) you'll probably lost the sale. There have been hundreds of studies on this, and all of them came to that conclusion. Even worse: latest trends (2008/09 researches) shows that span window is narrowing to less than 10 seconds. For those that aren't getting it: your mega cool supadupa header anim, your incredibly hot HD video in real size that takes 5 minutes to download, your page with 20 episodes per page... are killing your site, and therefore, your income.

I think what also has a big effect is what exactly you're showing in your trailer. The trailers imo should only show the quality of the videos and hotness of the girls. I visited a facial site one time, forgot which one, but they actually showed the full facial in their trailer. Why would the surfer sign up when the very thing he's looking for is shown in the trailer?

Thank you Harvy, excellent notes and comments. Just before you visited the Apple site, we went ahead and pulled the free trailer. We will review all your notes.

So you think we should pull that free Jolie video as well? We thought it was hot at the end, with the little mini previews of some lusty scenes... I'm still 50/50 on it. But you say it loads slow as well, and that slowness is bad for the surfer... I agree there. Keep the surfer moving to the join page.

Thank you again for the great notes! :thumbsup
L

We removed all trailers 2 days ago from our paysite for test for one week. Will see how its going. For weekend stats (2 days without a trailers) we detect lower sales then in previous weekend(with trailers).

To facilitate proper testing you need to be doing A/B testing during the same timeframe with the same traffic sources. Pulling trailers for a week will tell you something, but will not tell you anything scientifically. Too many variables can change hour to hour, day to day, week to week.

Nice info Harvey! Thanks for taking the time.

I agree! I will not show cum shots in my tours.

Most of the boy/girl sites show girls in clothes, girl naked, girl sucking the dick, girl getting fucked, then the guy cums on her face.
Its all over I have seen it all in the tour for FREE! Why and the hell should I join?

... month to month, year to year :) lol
Testing timeframe depends of #of sales/day and #of billing's in cascade (IMO)
Sites doing 1 sale/day(1 billing in cascade) and sites doing 100 sales/day(3-4 billings in cascade) must be tested in different timeframes.

If someone's testing across months or years, there's issues :)

wrong. although there's not a single formula, but many different formulas depending on variables, the whole idea of split A/B testing in online business is to work with short time spans, usually no longer than 2 months or year quarters (ie seasonal variations, holidays, etc). Online business has an extremely high development ratio and what was good 1 year ago may not be the same today. Think about the tubes scenario, would you say business is the same today than 1 year ago? let alone 2 years ago or more.

Someone could say "well, look at The Hun with the same design for years" and it's right, once you find something that works, you'll try to stick to it. Nevertheless, The Hun lost almost 50% of its traffic from 1 year ago to day.

about variables, the "trailer/no trailer" is just one of many. You can use color, style, navigation, layout, amount of content, type of content, shapes, sizes, whatever. All of them will affect the outcome in one or another way, some will have a bigger impact than others (color, text and content type are usually the most important ones) but all of them will have some sort of impact, and that's why A/B testing is needed (I prefer A/B/C to the very least, with C being a combination of A and B)

and finally, a little secret: EYES. any good designer or marketing person will know the power of eyes in a picture and also adapt it to the design needs. Most of the times designers should change them with something as little as 1px variation, but the results are always outstanding

Excellent analysis and input so far!

I have to add that I've experienced the opposite: if I post a new video to ElliNude.com, the ones I post with trailers/samples sell far better than ones without the samples. Maybe people aren't sure what quality to expect, or something. I don't give away the "good stuff" in the trailer, though, and I censor anything hardcore (genitals, etc). Maybe the censor blocks work like for GGW? :) Who knows? that's been my experience, at least.

I think maybe crap trailers kill ur ratios and good trailers help a bit.

Surely good trailers help the surfer to jerk off even faster...