Are gifs on a landing page the best or the worst idea ever?

Show Bootstrapped
#1

Hi guys!

I really need your opinion on something on my landing page.

Originally, I wanted to add some kind of video teaser on my landing page. However, right now I’m don’t really have the skills, time or monies that it require to make that happen.

So! Instead I made a few gifs for my landing page. It’s a really cheap and easy way to show some core features of my product, however I’m kinda afraid of turning my website into a Tumblr blog / Buzzfeed thing!

What do you think? Does it work or not? Link: https://wppusher.com

Would appreciate some feedback :smile:

Thanks!

#2

First reaction: the three gifs are right next to each other so they all play at once, making it impossible to focus on any one of them.

I think gifs are fine, just spread them out so I am only looking at one at a time. Also put in text the thing that I am supposed to get out of the animation. It may be obvious to you, but to someone who doesn’t know anything about your product you really need to just tell me.

HTH,
Cheers, Oliver.

#3

Hey Oliver!

Thanks a lot for taking a look!

I think I agree. It’s my main concern that it’s getting to messy!

#4

I like the idea and have a product gif on my home page as well (scroll down a bit). Have gotten a lot of positive feedback on it actually.

Agreed that it’s a bit much having them laid out like that. Maybe if they were laid out one per line with some more breathing room.

That’s actually one of the reasons I only used one gif for now is I didn’t want to overload people.

Only other thing though is that it’s possible that this kind of thing may only appeal to geeky types (like us!) who appreciate animated gifs. It’s possible that for less technical end customers, they might get confused by the gif - not understanding that it runs in a continuous loop or not understanding why there are no video controls, etc.

#5

Side by side GIFs are definitely not a good idea.

I like how the GIFs are used on this site:
http://pinegrow.com/

#6

That site looks great! Thanks.

#7

Hi

I like to ask how did you make the gifs?
I have a product and I like to do the same so to make it easy for users to understand how it works at the first glance

Thank you

#8

Checkout http://www.cockos.com/licecap/! It’s really amazing.

1 Like
#9

I use Camtasia to create the animated gifs on my website. Camtasia offers many other features, but if you don’t need them the licecap looks good!

I think that animated gifs are very good for showing quick interactions, where a text description doesn’t do the concept justice. Many users won’t click a video to watch it because they don’t have the time and therefore never fully grasp what you’re trying to describe to them. But, an animated gif shows them immediately.

2 Likes
#10

Hi Peter,
In general, I like animated screenshots like this on landing pages but I agree with @Oliver that the gifs are too much to manage visually when seen all at once.

I’ll also add that, at least on my machine, scrolling was a bit jumpy as if I were on one of those Tumblr blogs you mentioned. I will admit that I’m running a lot of software right now - so that could be it - but I’m not seeing the same behavior on similar pages elsewhere so I thought I’d let you know.

#11

Hey! Thanks for the feedback!

I’ve gotten like 50/50 go or no-go for the GIFs, so now I’m testing it to see what works best :smile:

Thanks for taking a look at the site, really appreciate it. I’m not completely sure what you mean with “jumpy”. Jumpy as in images are to heavy to load, so everything is jumping back and forth, or as in the design of the page?

#12

No, more like how when you scroll down a page and you expect it to glide smoothly until you stop it… You can still scroll but it’s like it stutters along instead of glides. Hope that makes more sense.

#13

Ah, in that way! Thanks for the clarification. I haven’t heard that before, so I guess I’ll have to do some testing on other machines / browsers etc. Thanks for the heads up!