Wistia's helpful welcome video

Wistia is a video hosting and marketing platform offering companies an all-in-one platform for creating, hosting, and analyzing their marketing videos. 

Wistia’s team found that some new users were running into a problem during onboarding: they didn’t have a spare video just laying around to edit or practice using the software on. 

That’s why Wistia created a loaner video that anyone could use to get their feet wet with the product. (It doesn’t hurt that it included the cutest pooch ever in a bowtie.)

With the loaner video, users could test drive Wistia’s features without needing to upload their own video or create one on the spot. However, the results weren’t exactly what the team had been hoping for. They quickly discovered that the video wasn’t leading to any meaningful user engagement, despite most users viewing it to completion.

So, Wistia went back to the drawing board. Instead of using a generic stock video starring their (very) cute dog, they decided to give new users a product-related version. The new video was light and fun, running through Wistia’s top customization features in a breezy 90 seconds. 

The changes were exactly what users needed, and Wistia’s activation metric skyrocketed by 20%. Users were watching the video and trying out new features in real time as it walked them through how to do it. 

This improvement was only possible because Wistia had access to the right data and analytics to understand what their users were doing and what they required to take that next step.

As Wistia’s former Director of Growth Andrew Capland puts it:

“I think … we have so many assumptions about what our users are doing, being able to actually go back and look [at what they do], either through Hotjar, FullStory, Appcues, Heap, whatever your poison is, it's the yin to the customer feedback, yang, their words and then their actions.”

What makes this #GoodUX:

• It’s personal, friendly, and fun. Using a video to teach users how to do seemingly straightforward things may seem boring, but it can be extremely effective.
• Experiment, experiment, experiment. Good UX is all about tinkering with the user journey until you’ve removed as much friction as possible. As Capland puts it, “there are little things like (the impact of the video) that you don’t know you don’t know until you get really close to understanding the problem, and then all of a sudden ideas like this just appear.” 
• It’s a great use of empty states, giving users something to get started with when they’re just beginning their journey with you.

Related links:

• Andrew Capland on LinkedIn
• Andrew's website Delivering Value
• Behind The Experience episode featuring Wistia and Andrew Capland

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