Video Preview Limitation Counter

When I re-launched AsianBoyNation last year, I had seen something on Video Box Men that was intriguing and I decided to implement it into my tour. They had a cookie based counter that set a limit of 4 video previews within a 24 hour period. Essentially, what this meant was that a non-member would come to the site and when they clicked to watch a video preview, at the end of the preview it would say "You have 3 previews left". My thinking was that by doing this, it would force the person to make a decision to join the site.

I want to know if any other Gay Wide Webmasters are using this technique or if people think this is a good or bad strategy.

Thanks for your feedback!

Laurence

i think its a really great way to encourage the customer to signup, as long as the videos on the tour are the best of the best ;)

i've personally signed up faster i believe because of this on a cpl sites heh:sla:

Why would you spend your time and energy (maybe money even) on something that can be bypassed so easily?

From a surfers point of view I would only be annoyed if I have to clear my cookies after 4 previews to see the next ones. Cookies are no mystery anymore and most surfers know deal with them if necessary.

Also it would make me think what kind of "limitations" are hidden inside. It's like window shopping where the shop owner pulls curtains over his remaining windows once I've looked at the first three windows. Would you go inside and buy there?

If you want to limit the number of preview videos on your tour (what's the reason for a tour?), just offer four videos and only show screenshots of the rest. And make those screens clickable so they link to the signup page instead of telling a potential customer that there are more videos, but he's been a naughty boy because he wanted to see more than four videos.

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Originally Posted by attis

Why would you spend your time and energy (maybe money even) on something that can be bypassed so easily?

From a surfers point of view I would only be annoyed if I have to clear my cookies after 4 previews to see the next ones. Cookies are no mystery anymore and most surfers know deal with them if necessary.

Also it would make me think what kind of "limitations" are hidden inside. It's like window shopping where the shop owner pulls curtains over his remaining windows once I've looked at the first three windows. Would you go inside and buy there?

If you want to limit the number of preview videos on your tour (what's the reason for a tour?), just offer four videos and only show screenshots of the rest. And make those screens clickable so they link to the signup page instead of telling a potential customer that there are more videos, but he's been a naughty boy because he wanted to see more than four videos.

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well its been my experience at least, when i've clicked to view more then a certain amount of videos that i get redirected to signup page not a popup or something telling me no more videos ;):cheerleader:

I tried that using the elevatedX managed tours on my (former) HunkMoney sites, but it lead to a lot of frustration & emails from members asking why they couldn't watch previews anymore. I took it off after only a week, so I don't know if it made any difference in sales stats.

We did do this. Every single video on our tours comes with a 20-60 second trailer. We did that except we had it set to 5. Our conversions were very nice UNTIL we emplemented this. Our conversions dropped well below 1:700 where as before this our conversions were 1:300ish. We lost our asses on it. We tried it for a month. Come time to pay a couple of our office guys, couldn't. We had to pull money out of savings to pay them or lose them. It really stranded us into a brutally rough situation.

I think in order for it to work, the site has to be beyond excellent. I'm seeing a lot of sites that had that set into play drop it. It also took us a while to get traffic back up.

Just as DRM, I would not use it.

This is my suggestion.

You have to look at it from a surfer's point of view.

You are used to being able to see a lot of free stuff period..and a lot of free previews. *IF* you like something you see on any particular site, then you'll be motivated to join.
But when you hit a site that has limits on the "free" tour, the thought crosses your mind that perhaps THAT is how the WHOLE membership part works. They don't know, just going on what the tour is telling them in their minds.

In the same kind of area, i find that tours with NO video previews convert amazingly well!

All the StandAhead sites and BoyCrush sites have no video previews. But have rolling thumbs like on tubes :)