Do you want to know the benefits of screencasting for your business and how you can easily get started?

Andy White of Wire World Media interviewed me for the Internet Marketing Podcast episode 48 Ink, Paper and Screencasts a couple of weeks back, we’re the last 12 minutes of the hour-long marketing podcast.

Topics covered include how screencasts convince more first-time visitors to try a product, how screencasts reduce support-costs by letting the viewer solve their own issue and how to get started using free and commercial software.  Also discussed is my plan to start revealing the positive statistics of using screencasts on conversions from A/B tests.

This podcast is listed with others and useful articles in our screencast interviews post.

Full transcript:

Andy:  So here we are on a rather windy day outside in Pavilion Gardens in Brighton, and I am sitting with Ian Ozsvald.

Ian:  Hello Andy.

Andy:  Hello there.  Now Ian, let’s just do a little bit of transparency at the front.  Ian does own a business called ShowMeDo, is that correct Ian?

Ian:    Yes, co-founder in the business, ShowMeDo, and I run a screencasting company called Procasts.

Andy:  And Procasts do screencasts for people, screencasts being ?

Ian:    A screencast is a video showing software in action.  It can show a web app or desktop software running in a video.  If you go the Apple site and you see their videos, those are screencasts.

Andy:  Brilliant.  So, what we want to talk about today in this brief interview is the reason why doing a screencast to promote your business or your product is a good idea.

Ian:    Thanks Andy.

I run a screencasting company and I’ve got a big thing about education.  I love teaching people how products and how skills work.  So, what I want to do in this interview is explain to you why you should be using screencasts in your Website.

Now, a screencast is a demo of software.  You have a 2 or 3-minute video showing the software in action.  This means that your first-time web visitor who’s never seen your product before, rather than forcing them to wade through screens of pictures and text trying to figure out if your product does what they need, instead they see it in action.  They get a nice, comfortable voice walking them through the product, they see it solving the problem that they’ve got, and at the end of it, they know whether your solution solves their problem.  And if it does, fabulous, they can get involved.

Andy:  Now, I’m guessing that this type of approach is particularly good for people whose product is actually software.  Would that be right?

Ian:  Absolutely.  If you’ve got a desktop software product on any platform, or if you’ve got a web application, then this is ideally suited for you.  Of course, if you’ve got a real-world product, you’ve got a physical product somebody uses in their hands, then you can’t use screencasting.  You’re going to need to use a real-world video, and we see that advertised on the tellie all the time, so we know that technique works.

But with software products, pretty much nobody is exploiting the technique of screencasting, except perhaps for Google and Apple and I’m really pushing for everyone to get involved with screencasting and try it out.  You can get started with paying no money at all, and the results really can be quite dramatic.

Andy:  Now, how does somebody, perhaps who is not technical, Ian, make a screencast?

Ian:  Now, a couple of years ago, you would have to download a piece of software to your machine, and it was software for Windows and for Mac machine.  You would install and you would run it, and it would capture the entire screen and the audio feed coming in from a microphone.  So, it’s a bit like using an editing piece of software on your PC.  You have to have some savvy using video editing software.  It would record your screen.  You would have scripted your presentation beforehand.  You’re going to run through your presentation, showing your user ñ just like having a demo with a friend sitting next to you, showing them what’s going on, clicking around, and at the end of it, you’ve got a nice video, which can you put onto the web.

Now, in the last six months, there’s been some interesting developments.  Three companies are now offering free web-based softwares.  One of them is Jing by Techsmith.  Another one is Screen Toaster.  And, the third one is Screencaster.

Each of these, they’re free services.  You go to their Website, you say “start recording,” it downloads a small applet, and it just starts recording your desktop and the audio feed from your microphone.  So, you can get started with no money at all.

Andy:  Now, I’ve heard of Screen Toaster.  Do they all work in pretty much the same way; basically, you download a small, sort of, client that runs on your machine, and then it uploads it to the mother ship, as it were?

Ian:  Absolutely.  From what I remember, with Jing you download an applet, which you install on your machine, then that runs locally.  So, every time you use a new machine, you have to install this bit of software.  Screen Toaster and Screencaster, they’re using a Java applet inside the browser, so you just click “record” and it just download what it needs.  You haven’t got to install anything, and it just starts recording off the bat.

Andy:  And do you get a chance to edit if you make a mistake, or do you have to redo it from the beginning?

Ian:  That’s the interesting thing, showing the immaturity at the moment of the online recording software.  With the online tools, you can’t edit your video.  You have to download what you’ve recorded and edit it offline, so on a Mac using iMovie perhaps, and on Windows, using one of the many editing tools.

But, if you’re using the desktop-based software like Camtasia on Windows and ScreenFlow on a Mac, they always come with an editor built in, so you can do all your editing there after you’ve recorded your video.

Andy:  Brilliant.  Now on your site, on Procasts, your exposing some steps, aren’t you, that show how effective having a screencast is?

Ian:  Well actually, what I’m intending to do is show the stats from ShowMeDo, because I am a co-founder of that site.  I’ve worked with clients and demonstrated some pretty interesting numbers.  For one of the clients, we’ve double his sign-up rate just by putting a video on the front page, and for another client, we decreased their support emails by 25%, and basically freed up one day of a guy’s time per week by making him not go through the same steps on a support query.  So these are pretty good numbers.

But, because their stats are private, I can’t expose those.  And really, to fulfill my aims of education, I want to expose real good, analytic data, and so I’m doing an experiment with ShowMeDo at the moment where I’m using videos on the sales page to increase the conversion rate, and I’m recording the stats.  I’ll be exposing those stats in their raw form on my blog, and then going through a number of A/V tests trying out different video styles, presentations, different ways of including the video, all to demonstrate exactly the right ways to increase your conversation rates using screencasts.

Andy:  So, where do people need to go to look at your blog, Ian?

Ian:  You need to come to my blog.  That’s blog.procasts.co.uk.

Andy:  Now, do you have any tips for people that are just about to embark on doing some screencasting, do’s and don’ts, Ian?

Ian:  Absolutely.  One of the first things you should do is think about who your audience is, first of all.  You want to isolate one group of people that you’re presenting to, and then you want to craft a script up front.  If you sit down and you just blather away for 10 minutes trying to come up with things on the fly, you’re going to have lots of um’s and er’s and gaps, and the video’s not going to be very well targeted.  No one’s really going to want to watch it.

But, if you know who you’re presenting to, what you’re teaching them, and you keep your script to 2 to 3 minutes (I always try and aim for 2 minutes), then you’ve got a really snappy, nice presentation, you’ll get your message across, and 80% of the viewers then will understand what you’re trying to explain and they’ll move on straight away.

If you go and start with the online free software, like Screen Toaster, then you can get up and running without paying any money, and you can just experiment for free.

Andy:  Do things like Screen Toaster make it easy to embed the video on your site?

Ian:  With Screen Toaster, you get a download link and they embed the video in their site, and I believe you can embed that video into your site.  Certainly, you can upload to YouTube, and you get some analytics out of that for free, and then you just take the video and you embed it into your site.  Alternatively, and I’m including this in my screencasting tutorial that I’m running on the blog at the moment, you can download the video, put it into your own site,  (6:55 unintelligible) based, and then using free JavaScript tools, embed that video; no adverts, no YouTube related video links, just your video in your site and play it to your users.

Andy:  You touched on something really interesting there, because when I first started this conversation with you, I was thinking, “Oh crikey, yes, this would be really good for people that perhaps have some software that they’ve developed, or maybe they’re a consultant and they want to show people how to do basic stuff.”  But, you mentioned support, and I had forgotten completely about support.  I mean, commonly asked questions; how do you do ABC where ABC’s a very commonly asked thing.

Andy:  Absolutely, yes.  One of my clients here in Brighton, they came to me and said that one of their guys was basically losing a day a week answering a query for users to their subscription service.  How did they stop paying every month?  And, they would be a bit confused about the process.  Commonly, they weren’t terribly web savvy user, they needed handholding, they wanted reassurance that they weren’t going to get their credit card cancelled by going through the cancellation process, so they kept on phoning up and sending in emails.

So, I created a video, just a very slow, well-paced video, 5 minutes long, going through all of the steps, lots of reassurance, and then overnight, this chap stop receiving support requests, and one day a week was freed up.  So, that’s a fantastic way just to stop spending your time and money repeating the same questions and answering them, and instead, get on with developing your product.

Andy:  So Ian, thanks so much for talking to us.

Now of course, your Website for the Procasts is

Ian:  Procasts.co.uk.

Andy:  And if anybody wants to, then obviously, go visit us.

Ian, what are your plans for the next few weeks?  I know you’ve got some requests, haven’t you?

Ian:  My big plan is to run a campaign to help everyone get a screencast into every Website.  I really want to see more people adopting the technique of screencasting.  So, once I finish the 9-part tutorial – I’ve got a few episodes to publish in the next few weeks – once that’s finished, I’ll be publishing a new series on the blog discussing how to get a screencast into your Website, why you need it, and how it will increase your conversations, and everything you need to do to get those screencasts in there.

Andy:  Well, some great tips there.

Ian Ozsvald of Procasts.co.uk, thank you very, very much indeed.

Ian:  Thanks very much Andy.

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts, twitter), writes The Screencasting Handbook and blogs (IanOzsvald.com).

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