I would say absolutely NOT. I’ve never, ever seen a good one.
Recent MEC tests show founder video on a subscription product actually can hurt conversions! They found that the person sometimes couldn’t see or hear the video for technical reasons, and that this would hurt the chances of conversion. Now, we didn’t see what he/she looked like, but let’s assume for a moment they were average looking.
But if they did manage to complete the video, conversion did manage to rise as the visitor continues the process.
My take away: For video use on landing page, make sure you use a rock-solid video transmission mechanism such as Flash and test the bejeezus out of it. Use good web-video production techniques (e.g. no panning if it’s not needed.) with awareness of compression and make sure the video covers only what video is best at covering.
Every time I’ve entered this conversatoin with a client, there is an instant “twilight zone” switch that gets thrown.. So I carry around links to the “At the Whiteboard” section over at ZDNet. This is the best use of human involved web video I’ve seen for any purpose. It gets right to the point and does a great job.
What I would love to see is this style of video combined with a service offering in a A/B test to see if it improves conversion.
