Animatron

From branding to content marketing to increasing conversions, there’s no doubt that video is one of the most powerful and versatile tools in a digital marketer’s arsenal.

As of 2013, the average person’s attention span is only 8 seconds – down from 12 seconds in 2000! – marketers have a very limited window of time in which to grab a visitor’s attention, and animated content is one of the most effective ways. In fact, 1.8 million words is the value of one minute of video, according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research.

The evidence is powerful:

  • Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
  • 64% of website visitors are more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video.
  • Websites with video receive 200% to 300% more monthly unique visitors – and those visitors have a 100% longer average time-on-site per visitor.

Now, with the mobile platform growing more and more each day – over 1.2 billion people access the web from their mobile devices – it’s more important than ever to ensure that your animated content will play across every device. Since Steve Jobsfamous refusal to run Flash on Apple products, Adobe Flash (which was the standard tool for creating animated content up until that time) began a slow death spiral. Enter the solution: HTML5.

HTML5 animated content doesn’t require the installation of any plugins. It’s universal, meaning that it’ll play on any device, from your desktop to your iPhone. It’s the way of the future! HTML5 is now definitively the best medium for mobile-friendly animations and interactivity – and that’s why we built Animatron: to provide a visual tool for HTML5 animation and eliminate the need to hand-code everything.

A lot has changed since Flash first came onto the scene, too; we’ve taken advantage of evolutions in tech to build the software to run in your browser, and users can work collaboratively with others in real-time by sending the link to their project.

Animated videos and interactive content are incredibly helpful tools across all aspects of marketing and have been proven time and time again to increase conversions, lower bounce rates, and engage visitors much more deeply than text alone.

An effective video marketing campaign can lead to great rewards, so make sure that your content is in modern, fast HTML5 so that it will be accessible and visible to each and every visitor who wants to look at it!

[box type=’success’]Catherine Arizan is part of the team at Animatron. She’s passionate about marketing, user experience and communication design.[/box]