Using video previews on the App Store might be a bad marketing strategy

When Apple first released iOS 8 last September, the mobile world was quick to embrace its new features. One of the most exciting changes for app marketing is showcasing your app through video previews. For many app marketing, especially in the gaming industry, presenting product-related video demonstrations to their potential users works amazingly well. Not only that, the first batch of applications that bravely tried marketing through this new feature also achieved good results.

Now, several months later, the app previews look neither new nor exciting, and the tool doesn’t seem all that effective.

1. The first thing to consider is cost

Creating a decent video preview is a difficult task, even if you choose a fairly basic production mode, but it still comes at a relatively high price. This video will limit your ability to creatively A/B test your app pages, where you can show different screenshots to users in different regions to test which is more popular. Easy-to-create screenshots will let you experiment with different styles to see what works best for your target audience. And the video preview may end up allowing you to generate various previews.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, in the ever-changing world of apps, where new releases are a regular occurrence, even the most professional videos can quickly become outdated. As a result, you’re forced to come up with a more mediocre promo that lacks creative ideas. Creating a video that will stand the test of time is not an easy task.

When you examine Apple's rules, videos and the parameters of the transformation they've undergone over the past few months, creativity gets more constrained. When Apple first introduced video previews to the App Store, we investigated the company’s guidelines and implementation procedures. We learned that while the writing rules seem as harsh as usual, Apple is actually very flexible and highly sympathetic to films that allow creative freedom, but at their own risk.

Well, that was then and this is now. Recent updates have shown that the company is taking a less-than-open-minded approach to apps, and that apps that don’t follow strict guidelines often end up being rejected from the App Store outright. While there are guidelines for screenshots, they aren’t very specific and, at least for now, are fairly restrictive. Mobile marketers should also note that Apple-approved videos can really only serve specific purposes.

Even those apps that opt ​​for video previews can’t escape the necessity of quality screenshots. This is because the video preview is only visible to iOS 8 users, which is only 78% of current iPhone users, meaning that by marketing your app through the resulting video trailer, this focused effort in creating marketing materials misses out on 22% of the phones Apple sells worldwide.

2. Videos sometimes negatively impact app conversion rates

However, the biggest problem for mobile videos is the impact they have on the app pages their users visit. After examining dozens of App Store Optimization (ASO) projects, we’ve noticed that videos sometimes have a negative impact on an app’s conversion rate.

When refining your app page experience, your goal should always be to create a compelling experience for potential users. The longer it takes them to decide whether they should download your app, the more likely you are to lose that user. For this reason alone, screenshots provide a better marketing tool because they discourage users from exploring the app in depth while still bringing specific highlights to the fore and convincing them to click “install.”

Videos, on the other hand, drive potential users to think and consider installing the app, which isn’t always great. While some apps may experience that submitting a video demo increases conversion rates, it takes a great preview to ensure significantly higher conversion rates, and how great a preview can you have within Apple’s rules and regulations?

App marketers should allocate their resources wisely. It is the best investment in a marketing tool that allows as much flexibility as possible and provides consistent results, as the newest option is not necessarily the best one.