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Comment by mustardhamsters | Hacker News Reader

Not a comment specifically on your app, but I found it amazing how quickly I closed out of this when the tutorial video showed up. I hadn't really thought of this before, and it might just be me, but most tutorial videos make me want to leave your site as quickly as possible.

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I can see why you (and other users) would think this, but a good demo video is the hallmark of tech startups. Dropbox's homepage displays nothing other than a login micro in the top right hand corner and a much larger demo video presented. It was the demo which made me immediately decide to download and use Dropbox (and I still do). This isn't an isolated technique - it's a trend on many different tech platforms to have a short animated skit describing its innovations. Another great example is Meraki - the "Meraki story in 2 minutes" brilliantly summarizes the company's mission and technology in an appealing way that a text rich page can't achieve nearly as easily.

Yeah, I'm aware of the trend. It's probably just me, but no description at all combined with the expectation of me watching a two minute video I can't progress beyond in an obvious way really turns me off. Your site is not the first one I've closed out of when a demo video comes up.

I can't disagree more. I am the kind of person that is very unlikely to ever sign up for a site that doesnt have some kind of demo or a video. It takes only a minute or two to passively watch a video to see if something might be interesting, where signing up to use some new service is way past my level of interest. A video is a much lower barrier to entry than much else.

maybe tutorial videos should have a button on the bottom that says - "skip the video and use the service"

Maybe even make it snarkier - "I've seen enough, sign me up!" etc. etc. to grab the user's attention. Confidence sells.

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