How and when to use Flash and Video on a website that aids in a prospect contemplating a major decision. 

Couple of stable datums from our laboratory where we still have Frankenstein hanging out with us..

1. Visiting a dealership’s website that contemplates a major decision is subconsciously re- stimulating to the prospects last experience at a dealership or their predisposition to what a dealership or industry represents i.e. car sales etc.

2. This results in an underlining stressful experience as they contemplate their next move of crossing the threshold via phone or in person.

3. At this point flash or anything that causes movement creates a slight sea sickness.

4. Secondary to nausea is the fact that one must “set” their eye trail and determine how their eye will scan the page and navigate the site. Video and movement typically interrupt the “handshake” between you and the website.

5. Starting a video can be successful under three conditions.

a. It’s more than 18 seconds long and less than 27

b. It communicates and shapes the “purpose” of the prospect’s visit to the site (another rabbit hole).

c. It matches the average prospects chronic emotional condition of existence, which can is determined by a few different models of which the most important is the product.

d. The video starts playing either in the dead center of the page or upper left exactly 40 pixels off the left and off the top.

e. Bonus Idea.. There is a gentle form attached to the video. We called this VideoForm™ back when we created the concept for ourselves in 2001 although we rarely use it today.

f. The entire video theme is no larger on screen that the size of the prospects palms.

6. Extra Credit Think: What dealers, businesses and we close to the industry think is cool is wildly different that what the customer thinks is cool or more importantly what works. What customers survey as cool and rate well is usually false data because they are either being asked in a state of non-stress or after the purchase, which doesn’t count. “Stress is a force that distorts a things true shape of form.” That’s why the key is to test things in a space where the individual is under the most amount of stress possible. If it works there, it works anywhere. So in the end what we think is cool in the forums and what creates the willingness in a stress filled prospect to cross the threshold and make contact is not typically what we think it is.

Great subject and a greater conversation… Starbucks?

Eddie Coleman