We have a text description at http://getliveloop.com but to tell you the truth, the video is the easiest, and dare I say, quickest way to understand what we do. The reason we have the text is that our target users are PowerPoint users, who often work in settings where they cannot listen to audio.
Obviously a site should have both text and video but I don't blame anyone who does the video first.
Unless they just changed it, they seem to have snappy taglines that explain it well already:
Liveloop is really real-time collaboration within Powerpoint
Collaborate in real-time, keystroke by keystroke, without ever leaving Office.
These aren't bad. I wonder if they have tested them with the target market.
I have sympathy. It's a hard concept to get across.
That said, it takes until 2:30 in the video before we see people collaborating on the same slide at the same time. And there might be a bit of meta-confusion because they're working on a presentation for "LiveLoop Zoo". I know that seems like a harmless self-reference, but I've seen people get tripped up on much easier ideas.
That seems a bit wrong. I wonder if, instead of a video where I have to press "play", we could have a silent animation that starts immediately on the home page. Show two cartoon figures typing into PowerPoint screens, with their changes reflected immediately. (And it's never bad to show human faces with emotions.)
Anyway, that sort of thing is hard, and they're to be commended for getting this far, my armchair criticism aside.
How about doing hallway usability testing? Show the page to people in the target market for five seconds and then ask them "what does this company do?" Five of these will tell you everything you need to know.
If you don't have a constant stream of fresh users walking through your offices, you can do something on http://www.usertesting.com/ .
A/B testing understanding might not be feasible, but in the end, they are trying to sell their plugin so A/B testing for signups or sales or something like sounds like a good correlation to understanding.
I don't disagree that the video is the easiest and quickest way for you. The point is that it's harder for many/most users than reading text. Think about it in terms of system requirements:
- Web page with text as the primary -> a browser
- Web page with video as the primary -> a browser, sound device, sound output device, absence of anything else using the sound device (this means I have to pause my music), etc.
More requirements -> fewer useful impressions. And again, what's wrong with writing? Even YC makes applicants send a (text) description of their plan. It should be a red flag if you cannot describe your business in a short text snippet.
Yes, I saw the page. I'm not sure how you test that the video is getting more responses, but could it be that this is the case because you don't have your one-sentence pitch in text on the site? This is the pitch from the video, which isn't on the home page:
Liveloop is a simple powerpoint plugin that lets everyone work on the document at the same time, seeing everyone else's changes as they type.
That alone could be why the video converts better: it tells (not shows) what you do in a way the text doesn't. To do a fair test, you'd need to have text materially similar to what's in the video.
> The reason we have the text is that our target users are PowerPoint users, who often work in settings where they cannot listen to audio.
You say a video is best, even though you also say that a video isn't best for your target audience?
Accessibility makes things better for everyone, not just those people who need it. If you'd approached this with accessibility in mind you'd have realised that a video was sub-optimal, and come up with some form of text. That (while not covering everything) would have been more helpful for more people. As can be seen from the comments here.
I did design it with accessibility in mind. There is a text description right under the video, and there are captions on the video itself. But neither of those change the fact that the video is the most compelling way to communicate what we're doing.
Obviously a site should have both text and video but I don't blame anyone who does the video first.