How to capture video testimonials

There are many different ways to capture testimonial. This could be done using text, 200 words or less and it can mean a difference between a visitor and customer.

Now to make the testimonial greater the next best thing is to include the image. If you are selling a service, image of your happy customer might be perfect. If you are selling a product then combination of happy customer and a product would be best.

How can you take that yet one more step above? Well, that is what we will discover together through this article.

That one next step

We talk, walk, eat and sleep with video in mind here at Ziggeo. However think about it, do we not all do the same? Before the newspapers were read from the paper and that was the big thing to do in morning next to the coffee.

Today this is rarely the case with tablet or mobile phone in your hands or on the table next to your breakfast. After all it offers you a quick way to get introduced to new developments in the area of interest.

Because of the same the best way to introduce a lot of new things to yourself is usually either through a trusty source of information, like maybe our blog. For services or places you do not really know and want to get to know real quick, the best way is - you guest it - a video.

Adding video to your testimonial

By adding video to your testimonials you will immediately allow yourself to have your testimonials stand out. The reason is simple, everyone likes the ability to play something and listen to it and watch while they are multitasking - such as eating a breakfast or even skimming through channels on TV.

The video offers least amount of effort for the person watching it and in the same time they get introduced to your product or your service. Definitely looks like a win-win.

Video also allows you to showcase both your customer and your product in the same time. What better way to sell your product than a customer screaming on the video "I LOVE THIS PRODUCT".

How to set it all up

We hear you. That all sounds great and simple and you already wanted to do that. There is just one question - how can I do it.

First, we want you to do it right, so we will let you know few little tips as we go along. By the end you will be the expert about what you are using as well as how to modify it, even if you and code do not play well together.

Know your limits

Often overlooked, limits are actually great way to structure things. This is the same for testimonials. Just to give you an example so that it makes more sense for you, let us talk about text for a moment. There are cases where you can benefit and want a lot of text in your content. For testimonials, this is usually not the case.

You want testimonials to be:

  1. Simple to read,
  2. Talk about how happy your customer is
  3. Talk about how awesome your product / service are

So how do you put that into video? With Ziggeo == easy!

You can always add few notes above or under the recorder to help guide the person recording themselves. We recommend adding it under just so that their eyes are looking towards the camera as much as possible. Unless you hide the recorder, in which case the questions should be higher up on the screen.

We also recommend adding a time limit. This would make sure that they record a short enough video without it going for 10 minutes. To limit your recorder to 1 minute, you would do so like this: timelimit="60". We add 60 because this parameter accepts seconds.

Another limit is a visual cue for your customers. Specifically these are lines that our recorder shows where they should place themselves. These lines are limits within they should stand while they are recording themselves.

You can activate them by simple adding faceoutline parameter.

Understand your audience

This seems simple, yet often can be easily overlooked. We all want to get the highest video resolution into our system. This is all great for modern devices and applications. What if your target audience is not using the latest and greatest? Maybe they are in the area where connection is not the best. Maybe they just do not have a need to have great mobile device or fancy new camera attached to their PC.

If you set up your requirements too high, you might just make it impossible for some of your customers to capture the video that might just be a corner stone for you.

Our defaults are designed to work on various devices out there. Newer as well as older, however the default resolution of 640x480 might not be what you are after.

For that reason we suggest to know what is the highest you can go while still having your customers easily support the same.

For the HD resolutions we would suggest going with 720p (for example 1280x720) that offers quality and is supported well enough.

If your audience is someone that is not familiar with technology or in general use older devices, you might instead leave the default instead. Of course, just the same, if your audience are people that live and breath technology and run only the latest 1080p resolution is just one change away.

To set your desired resolution you would use 2 parameters. recordingheight="1280" and recordingwidth="720".

How our code looks like

We have mentioned several parameters for you to use however we did not show you how it all comes together. Let us see just how simple it is:

<ziggeorecorder ziggeo-theme="modern"
                ziggeo-themecolor="blue"
                ziggeo-timelimit="60"
                ziggeo-faceoutline
                ziggeo-recordingheight="1280"
                ziggeo-recordingwidth="720">
</ziggeorecorder>

That is it. You have your recorder ready. What you will need next to that is the header code that you would add just once to your page.

This is just a copy and paste and you can see it here.

Collecting info

Now collecting video is something we covered. What if you wanted more? What if you wanted to collect some additional data next to the video? Maybe a name and email? Maybe you offer multiple products and want to know what videos belong to what product?

All these are valid questions however they will involve a bit more code. If you are not familiar with code, we will try to make it simple so that it is easy enough to follow. Still if you need any assistance please reach out to our support team at support@ziggeo.com.

First thing you need to know what you would like to collect with the video and if you will collect video with data, or data with video.

Collecting video with data

If this is the approach you are after, this would mean that you already have some setup through which you are collecting the testimonials. Very common approach would be to collect the data through some form builder solution where the form would allow you to collect name, email, and other such details.

To start collecting video you will need to add the video as described above. Next to that you would add a field within your form.

For example lets say that your input field looks something like this:

<input id="testimonial_video">

All you would do is to modify your recorder to look like so:

<ziggeorecorder ziggeo-theme="modern"
                ziggeo-themecolor="blue"
                ziggeo-timelimit="60"
                ziggeo-faceoutline
                ziggeo-recordingheight="1280"
                ziggeo-recordingwidth="720"
                ziggeo-input-bind="testimonial_video">
</ziggeorecorder>

Yes, that is all you would need to do.

Once the video is recorded, the video token will then be automatically added to your input box and saved with the other details.

Collecting data with video

In this case you would be collecting some details like name, email and product with the video. This is great if you want to use our API to find videos that are associated with some product for example.

To help you with this we will need to assume some things, after all every website is a bit different. So please keep that in mind and modify what is needed.

For example lets assume that you have following 3 fields: Product Name, Name and Email and that they look like this:

<input id="product_name" type="text">
<input id="customer_name" type="text">
<input id="customer_email" type="email">

Now, your recorder would be just slightly changed to the following, to help us work with it:

<ziggeorecorder id="testimonial_recorder"
                ziggeo-theme="modern"
                ziggeo-themecolor="blue"
                ziggeo-timelimit="60"
                ziggeo-faceoutline
                ziggeo-recordingheight="1280"
                ziggeo-recordingwidth="720"
                ziggeo-input-bind="testimonial_video">
</ziggeorecorder>

Next to it we will add the following code:

<script>
    var recorder = ZiggeoApi.V2.Recorder.findByElement( document.getElementById('testimonial_recorder') );

    recorder.on("verified", function() {
        var video_token = recorder.get('video');

        var data_object = {
            data: {
                "product_name": document.getElementById('product_name').value,
                "name": document.getElementById('customer_name').value,
                "email": document.getElementById('customer_email').value
            },
            tags: document.getElementById('product_name').value
        };

        var response = ziggeo_app.videos.update(video_token, data_object);

        response.success( function (data) {
            // Anything can go here, for example you can set to show the thank you page.
        });
    }
</script>

That code will fire as soon as the video is recorded. As it does it will capture the name, email and product and attach it to the video through update call.

Now this is intentionally showing more code for those that like code. Maybe you are after something as a nice start to continue from. If you are not, and would prefer to just click through few options to get started that is great. We are actually glad you said so at this point. The reason is simple, we are using codes similar to the ones above on our hosted pages. You can just create a hosted page and you will have your self the same setup. With them all you did was click few options.

To see more about hosted pages, please check out the following page in our docs.

Summary

Videos are definitely the next step you can take to have your testimonials shine more and help you. If you follow the few points we mentioned above, you will be on great path. Still we understand that sometimes you might need to get some help and as we mentioned, please reach out to our support team if so.

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