VideoNova [review]

Today Im taking a look at VideoNova by Craig Crawford

I because interested in VideoNova because a while back I did a review on a WordPress plug in that was suppose to let you put click able Google style ads and banners over your YouTube videos. Unfortunately that software was very poorly done and was produced by a vendor that had no interest in fixing its many bugs (even when I offered to do it for him for free). So when I heard about VideoNova I wanted to check it out because I liked the concept and honestly personally hoped that this one was well done.

My review copy was delivered via a members area that I had to log into. In that members area is a welcome video, the main download page, a bonus, support and a few other links.

Fortunately I was not disappointed and was in fact quite surprised when I tested this plug in. You see Video Nova does a lot more than just let you add click able banners. It lets you really exploit YouTube in a lot of ways. For example you can add full HTML overlays. You can require people to like you or share your page to watch a video and you can add surveys (polls) that show up over your videos. I really like the share to watch feature. This is a good way to get people to spread your site around social networks and bring in free traffic.

An interesting feature  is that you can splice in other videos that are click able inside of your main video. This is a feature that I really liked because what it means is that you can run a content video, something that people will want to watch and then in the middle of it throw up an click able advert, kind of like a commercial break. I dont think I have ever seen a software that does this.

So why is this important anyway? Well a lot of people are using videos in there blogs or websites. In fact I would myself more if I had a better theme on my site that didn’t constantly jack up YouTube videos. People use videos because we are in the age of video honestly. There is something like 6 billion hours of YouTube video watched every month. That’s insane and it also tells us one thing for sure. People love getting their content via video.

The problem with using video on your site is that people tend to come to the site, watch the video (since that’s their preferred content type) and then leave without reading any text in the page or post. What this means is that they are focusing their attention on the video and not on the rest of your site. By using this plug in you can put your ads, banners, and even video ‘commercials’ right in the video, right where their attention is focused. I can see this increasing conversions for sure.

The sales page says that this works on mobile devices and  tablets. I wanted to test this on my iPhone 5 but I was riding my motorcycle today and got caught in a heavy summer squall and ended up soaking wet with my phone in my pocket and now my phones screen does not work. I did test with my old iPhone 3. On that phone YouTube videos open up on a new full screen window and in that window it did not appear that the banners I was testing where showing in that view. Now this was by no means a thorough test as it was done on an old phone without an outdated version of iOS and Safari. Im sure the product creators tested much better then the 2 minutes I spent on it. Still just to be safe I wont endorse the mobile functionality.

This is not the end of the world though. While mobile is for sure very popular. People tend to use mobile more for social media and email than reading blogs. For example over 81% of the traffic on BrettRutecky.com comes from desktop users.So even if it only works on some mobiles or the most up to date ones I honestly dont consider this a major problem.

So what didn’t I like about this plug in? Well first let me say that it is very easy to use and intuitive and I had no problems with setting it up, adding a video, and adding my ads to it. But the thing that I honestly think could have been done better was the training and support. While it has in in WordPress help area the area is just a FAQ section (that is empty) and a generic contact email. In order to get any kind of training you have to go back to that members area. In there are training videos however they are not well done. The videos explain the features but Craig tends to mumble in them a bit and worse yet the videos have no controls. So you can’t fast forward to re-watch something you saw at an earlier session and you cant rewind to replay something. Instead you have to click away from the members area and watch it on YouTube so you can have controls. I found this annoying and also really stupid. There is no advantage to not having controls in the training videos.

Fortunately because this software is well designed and easy to use the poor support and training is only a minor inconvenience instead of a major flaw. While I think they slacked a little in this area it is clear that a lot of time and effort was put into making this a excellent and feature rich software.

Given that video is one of the most popular content types on the internet and that this allows you to put banners and adverts right in the video where your site visitors attention is most focused I’m going to say that this is a very useful tool to have. Its a must have for anyone who uses YouTube videos on their site. It is very well written, full of features, and I believe that anyone using video content can for sure increase there clicks and conversions with this software. Click the link below for a full demo of Video Nova.

http://jvz3.com/c/41241/111147A 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.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

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Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

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