Waikato Business News September/October 2018

WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS September/October 2018 21
One change increased
sales by 82 percent
Recently we made one small change to a
client’s ecommerce site which increased
their sales by 82 percent.
The company sells an
innovative sporting product,
which they make
right here in Hamilton and ship
around the world.
They have a strong website
that is highly optimised and producing
a large number of sales
each month, and yet this one
change made an enormous difference.
Unlike many ecommerce
sites, their website is not a
multi-product ecommerce store,
but is instead a single product
site. When users arrive, they
need to be introduced to the
innovative product, convinced
it will work and then given
options of what quantity they
would like to purchase.
The sales video on the website
is a key part of this process
of introducing website visitors
to the product, and then convincing
them to buy.
If you have an innovative
product that needs a bit of
explaining, video is a powerful
medium for connecting with
your audience. A good video
can take people along the journey
from not being aware of the
problem your product solves,
to being strongly aware of the
problem, and then to knowing
that your product is most definitely
the best way to solve it.
The sales video on our client’s
website does just that. It is
well scripted and takes viewers
along the journey towards wanting
to buy. It cleverly handles
key objections, and throughout
the video builds the case for
which their product is the perfect
solution.
The page with
no video controls
produced 82 percent
more sales than the
original page, with
the same amount of
traffic!
The video is a tad over seven
minutes long. While this is fine
for a compelling sales video,
we suspected that when people
see the length it might put some
people off watching it in full.
One option we could have
explored would have been to
test a shorter edit of the video
against the longer video. However,
this would have required
cutting out crucial content and
would have taken significant
time to get completed. So
instead, we ran a split test where
we decided to measure the result
of hiding the video controls.
This meant instead of seeing
all the standard controls (play,
pause, timeline, etc), website
visitors were just given a play/
pause button. They couldn’t see
how long the video was, and
they couldn’t fast forward.
Our hypothesis was that if
people couldn’t see how long
the video was, they would watch
the video and see if it was interesting,
without being put off by
the length. This would cause
them to watch more of the video
than the users who could see the
controls, which would lead to
them being more convinced and
buying more product.
Our split test sent half of the
traffic to the original page and
half of the traffic to the duplicated
version that had no video
controls.
You already know the result:
The page with no video controls
produced 82 percent more sales
than the original page, with the
same amount of traffic!
With such an outstanding
result we dug into the video
views data to see how much
further users were watching
through the video. The data
wasn’t at all what we expected.
We measured the percentages of
viewers who watched 50 percent,
75 percent, 90 percent and
100 percent of the video, and in
each of these brackets the original
version of the page had better
statistics!
It didn’t make sense… until
we examined the scrubbing (fast
forwarding) data. Users on the
THE DIGITAL WORLD
> BY JOSH MOORE
Josh Moore is the managing director at digital marketing agency,
Duoplus. josh@duoplus.nz www.duoplus.nz
original page with the full video
controls were often skipping
forward along the timeline. So,
they were reaching the markers
at 50 percent, 75 percent, 90
percent and 100 percent of the
video, but they hadn’t watched
all the content leading up to that.
Whereas the new version of
the page had a lower percentage
of people watching to the later
parts of the video. But because
they couldn’t skip over the
content, they watched the full
message and became more convinced
about the product, resulting
in 82 percent higher sales.
This approach won’t work
for every business. But if you
have an innovative product or
service, and a good convincing
video that is more than 2-3
minutes long, try hiding the
video controls in a split test, and
measure the difference. It might
just produce a substantial boost
in sales, just like it did for our
client.
Imitation may be flattery, but it’s potentially illegal
Imitation is a kind of “artless
flattery”, wrote Eustace
Budgell in The Spectator in
October 1714.
Some 300 years later, imitation
is still a kind of artless
flattery. But it is also illegal if
it infringes someone’s copyright
rights – as the High Court
recently found in Sealegs
International Limited v Zhang
[2018] NZHC 1724 (12 July
2018) (Sealegs).
Sealegs is the designer and
manufacturer of an amphibious
boat system of the same
brand name. Sealegs alleged
the defendants had infringed its
copyright rights by appropriating
the design arrangement of
components that comprised the
essential core of the Sealegs
retractable leg system for small
boats. After careful and expert
analysis, the court agreed and
found most of the defendants
liable for infringement of Sealegs’
copyright rights, even
though they had apparently
undertaken a fair amount of
their own design work.
Sealegs is not the first case
in which defendants have been
found liable for “imitation”
despite having undertaken
design work themselves. Take
Oraka Technologies Limited v
Geostel Vision Limited [2013]
NZCA 111 (18 April 2013), for
example.
The Court of Appeal found
the third defendant, Napier
Tool & Die Limited, liable for
infringement of copyright in
a cup assembly incorporated
in an asparagus spear grading
machine developed by a
Mr Schwarz. It is clear from
the decision that the infringing
cup assembly was not a
“slavish” copy and that the
defendants had undertaken a
certain amount of design work
themselves. Despite this, the
parties’ experts all accepted that
the infringing cup assembly
resembled “a second generation
model of the [plaintiffs’] cup
assembly” and thus the court
reached its decision.
Another example is Steelbro
NZ Ltd v Tidd Ross Todd Ltd
[2007] NZCA 486 (2 November
2007). In this case, Steelbro
sought to overturn a decision
of the High Court which found
Steelbro liable for infringing
Tidd Ross Rodd’s copyright
rights in the design of a sideloader.
At [113] of the decision,
the Court of Appeal stated:
“In fairness, there is no question
Steelbro did a great deal of
work itself. In the classic economist’s
phrase ‘it built a better
mousetrap’. Nevertheless, an
inference of copying was possible,
indeed probable, unless
Steelbro could negative it by
establishing that the similarity
was not due to the copying.”
Steelbro could not disprove
the inference of copying and
consequently the Court of
Appeal upheld the High Court’s
decision.
Although the Sealegs, Oraka
and Steelbro decisions traverse
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES
> BY BEN CAIN
Ben Cain is a Senior Associate at James & Wells and a Resolution
Institute-accredited mediator. He can be contacted at 07 928 4470
(Tauranga), 07 957 5660 (Hamilton), and benc@jaws.co.nz
different types of products,
they all have one thing in common.
The application of the
legal principle that, the fact the
infringer has added separate
original work to an infringing
copy – perhaps enhancing the
product in the process – does
not make it any the less an
infringement. In other words,
even if you improve, modify
or enhance someone else’s
existing product, you won’t
necessarily escape liability for
infringement.
The take-home for businesses
then is this: when it
comes to designing a product,
or even a logo, start with a
blank sheet of paper, because if
you are challenged you should
be able to demonstrate an independent
design path from start
to finish. If you cannot show
such a path you risk foundering,
just as those in Sealegs did.
BEWARE OF FOREIGN IMITATIONS.
There’s no shortage of great ideas in New Zealand.
But for an innovative bunch, we’re not the best at
realising the full potential of our innovations, particularly
when exporting them.
At James & Wells, we can identify your competitive
edge, offer business strategies for specific markets and
help you own and leverage your intellectual property to
ensure no one steals the fruit of your labour.
www.jaws.co.nz | +64 7 957 5660