VidEngage [review]
POS:
Solid product based on common senseNEG:
No font previewToday I’m doing a review of VidEngage So what exactly is VidEngage? Well its a web based software that is designed to get you more engagement to your videos. It does this by making sure that your videos and optionally a call to action link are always in view. This is something that is honestly […]
Today I’m doing a review of VidEngage
So what exactly is VidEngage? Well its a web based software that is designed to get you more engagement to your videos. It does this by making sure that your videos and optionally a call to action link are always in view. This is something that is honestly kind of hard to describe but very easy to show. So simply scroll down in this post until the video is off the screen and you should see what VidEngage does right away.
Ok assuming you did that you should have seen my review video appear in the lower right hand corner of the screen (I could have selected any corner). This is what VidEngage does. It ensures that your video content is always right in front of the site visitor and available to them. This is important because video is the content that gets the most results so you naturally always want it to be prominent on your site. Also for good measure VidEngage allows you to put a clickable call to action link above or below the smaller video. This means not only is your best content always available but your buy button or affiliate links is also always available.
VidEngage is very simple to use, yet its a great concept. We know for sure that video leads to more sales, more options, and in short just works better than text content. By having the video always available and in front of the user common sense tells us that we are going to get more engagement on the videos. Also by having a call to action link always in front of the user common sense tells us that we are going to get more clicks.
Besides that I really think that having a functionality like this adds a touch of professionalism to the site. It just looks cool and makes your site look like its a more ‘advanced and interactive’ site.
There where a couple of things that I thought could be improved on. When setting up your custom call to action link you can chose from a lot of different fonts for the call to action text. But there is no font preview so that makes it hard to select a good looking font unless you already know the fonts and what they look like. Also when you click the call to action link it opens the link in a new tab. What this means is if the video is playing when the link is clicked it will continue to play in the old tab which can become a distraction.
Now I mentioned both of these things to Ankur and he assured me he would update the system, and while I believe he will, these things do exist at the time of writing this article so I have to mention them. In the interest of being fair to Ankur it is also important to note that I was testing on a test server, not on the live sever, which already has other functionality that was not available on the test server.
I like that VidEngage is not some crazy hype product based off some weird idea that someone had. Instead its a simple to use, easy software, that is at its core based off common sense. I think VidEngage is going to be good for anyone using video on their website. This includes people doing reviews, blogs, squeeze pages, or sales pages. Basically any website that uses video is going to benefit from VidEngage. Its simple, but it just makes sense.
Update: Ankur and the VidEngage team have been making improvements based on user feedback. Site visitors can now close the mini video, the CTA link can now open in a new tab or the same tab at your option and it can be set to not show on mobile devices if you prefer. I think its great to see a vendor making improvements to ensure that their users are happy and get the best possible product.
Bonus: Ankur has provided me with the following bonuses for anyone who picks up VidEngage through me. You will get instant access to them all.
A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
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Brett….Do you know if this software is compatible with other squeeze page builders and sales page builders such as your own Profit Canvas or other self hosting page builders?
As far as I can tell, it can only be used on wordpress or a html site
I cant say it if will work in general with other page builders since I dont know all the page builders out there. But you simply insert a code snippet to make this work so it should work with any page builder that lets you insert a custom code snippet. My Profit Canvas does not currently allow Javascript to be inserted in the page content (this planned in the first update though) so it wont work with that.
Stu, is right, this is having a buggy effect on the scroll action. I am using a desktop pc with Chrome, so it’s not just the ipad.
When you try to scroll down through the text it jumps to this line “so that makes it hard to select a good looking font unless you already know the fonts and what they look ” which is in the 3rd paragraph from the bottom. So then you have to scroll back up and figure out where you were reading from, each time you scroll down it jumps to that line again, very annoying, you may want to pass it on to Ankur, Cheers
I dont see this problem at all even when testing in Chrome. Im going to ask Ankur to come take a look at this post though. Thanks for the detailed description, since neither I nor Ankur can reproduce this, would it be to much trouble to ask you to make a video showing the issue you are having?
Sure, a nice idea to keep the video in view, but for me, reading, or trying to read that page, it’s a right pain the ass. Try reading the content. When you scrol past the video you lose where you were in the text! You have to scrol back up to find where you were and then you lose it again as you scroll down!
I gave up trying to read it. I have enough frustrations without trying to read something that keeps disappearing.
What’s more important here? Content or contact? The page owner might feel it’s contact, but the reader, I feel, might have a different perspective.
I am reading on an iPad. It may be better on a desktop, but frankly this is enough to put me off.
Im not sure how you lose where you where in the text, or what you mean by ‘read something that keeps disappearing’ since the only thing that appears or disappears is the video, which you dont read, and it only happens based on your actions not on its own. I have not tested this in an iPad (I’m fairly anti Apple), I did test on a Galaxy Tab and it works just as expected and just like it does on desktop it does not effect the content at all, but if you could elaborate on what is happening to you I that would be great.
Hi Brett,
I don’t like the fact that you can’t get rid of it if you want to. There’s no way to close it. I don’t know about anybody else, but from a customer standpoint, I get sick of all the bars and sticky things that follow you up and down as you scroll. I’m not saying this is a bad product, just it can be annoying sometimes to me. It definitely might be good to test it out and see if it improves conversions. I think it should have a close button though. Your thoughts. Also, thanks again for your honest review.
The live version, on the live server, (which was not available when I tested) has added a close button. I got access to the live version which has this feature and updated my example on this page so you can see how the close functionality works.
some of the bonusses give a download error. Happens more and more these days, they should check what they put on to downlaod. I’m getting sick of sending emails to IM marketiers, who don’t check iff the downloads work. And sometimes you have to wait for days before they repair. It is really annoying because you have to write down to be sure you don’t forget, habe to log in again…
Happy with your reviews. First thiong I check before I buy anything.