Animation can enhance your video content by adding visual appeal, storytelling, and engagement. But how do you know if your animation is effective and achieving your goals? In this article, you will learn some basic concepts and methods to measure the impact of animation on your video content.
Animation is not just a decorative element, but a powerful communication tool that can influence your audience's perception, emotion, and action. By measuring the impact of animation, you can evaluate how well your animation aligns with your video objectives, such as increasing awareness, retention, conversion, or satisfaction. You can also identify what works and what doesn't, and optimize your animation strategy accordingly.
When measuring the impact of animation, you should consider different aspects depending on your video goals and metrics. Animation quality can be assessed by criteria such as clarity, consistency, relevance, and aesthetics. Animation performance is determined by indicators like attention, recall, comprehension, emotion, and action. And animation value is estimated by methods such as attribution, comparison, or testing to measure the contribution to video outcomes like views, shares, likes, comments, leads, sales, or loyalty.
Discuss the goals of your animation with the client. If they are looking to promote an app for example, a linear metric to evaluate is installs resulting from your animation. If the goal is more abstract - such as creating brand recognition - consider adding a unique link that a viewer could be directed to within the animation, and measure subsequent actions that the link generates.
Measuring animation quality can be done using a checklist or rubric that evaluates the animation based on specific criteria. Ask yourself or others to rate the animation on a scale of 1 to 5 for questions such as 'Is the animation clear and easy to understand?' or 'Is the animation relevant and appropriate for the video purpose and audience?'. Calculate the average score for each criterion and the overall score for your animation quality, then use qualitative feedback from yourself, your team, or your audience to identify strengths and weaknesses.
Another way to measure animation performance is to use data and analytics that track and analyze your audience's behavior and response to your animation. For example, you can use tools such as eye-tracking, heat maps, or surveys to measure how much attention your animation attracts, how much information your animation conveys, how much emotion your animation evokes, and how much action your animation inspires. You can also use metrics such as watch time, retention rate, completion rate, or engagement rate to measure how well your animation keeps your audience interested and involved.
You can track watch time and other metrics via YouTube Creator Studio - assuming that's where your video is hosted. Vimeo also provides metrics if hosting on their platform. You can also measure a variety of stats using Google Analytics when embedding your video into your website, or by installing the MonsterInsights plugin for Wordpress.
A third way to measure animation value is to use methods that estimate or compare the impact of your animation on your video outcomes. For example, you can use attribution models that assign a percentage of credit to your animation for each outcome, such as views, shares, leads, or sales. You can also use comparison methods that contrast the performance of your video with and without animation, or with different types of animation. You can also use testing methods that experiment with different animation variables, such as timing, duration, frequency, or style, and measure how they affect your video results.
By measuring the impact of animation on your video content, you can gain valuable insights into how to improve your animation strategy and achieve your video goals. You can also demonstrate the value of animation to your stakeholders and justify your investment in animation.
I highly recommend inserting a trackable Call to Action at the end of your animation that is specific to that unique piece of content. Don't just add in your website homepage URL, instead create a dedicated page, display the link within your video, and analyze the incoming traffic the content has uniquely driven. This will give you far better metrics from which to assess value.