I was just trying to login to my Paypal account on my 2600 x 1600 main monitor and imagine my shock when the giant screen went into full size motion.
That a mainstream financial site would be running larger than HD videos by default is a huge change in the infrastructure and the aesthetic of the web.
What chance does television stand?
While I have grave misgivings about Paypal, I have to say their new look is a huge improvement. Minimalism with muted colours and tasteful text.
The goal in this video seems to be to create a feeling in the visitor that visiting Paypal is like visiting a favourite cafe with a friend. That’s a much better association than its current infomercial and eBay branding.
That we are all throwing around HD video casually as a greeting is great news for our FV Flowplayer which is the most feature rich and easiest to use WordPress video player.
Recently we’ve added the world’s most secure preview mechanism to FV Flowplayer so you can share the opening of your pay videos with your free users, knowing that only paid up visitors will be able to see the whole thing.
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
This is a terrible idea and PayPal doesn’t provide an option to turn it off.
I use and go to PayPal for one reason and one reason only… As a means for my customers to pay me for my product and when I go to PayPal I don’t appreciate (or even understand) why they force a brief lag in my high speed cable connection before I can sign in.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “Time is Money”… so PayPal stop wasting my time.
For the 2 staff (including myself) with vision issues, the site is awkward to log on to, it plays with your vision and is an unnecessary distraction. They should do as Steve says and offer a switch off button.
There is a pause button.
Hello Jason, I know there is it shows up 10 or 15 seconds after the page loads and in that amount of time I want to have been on my overview page for at least 5 seconds. :o)
There should be an opt out option so those of us that use PayPal can turn that silliness off. We don’t go there to be entertained… We go there to take care of business and IMO the home page slows everything down.
Good point Steve. There should really be an easy opt out button or cookie system that one doesn’t have to see the video every time, as it is a big download.
Guys, I hear what you’re saying but I think its pretty awesome marketing, especially for the folks PayPal is intending to wow with it (new customers).
My company uses PayPal and our employees have to access PayPal regularly throughout the day. The solution for you is to simply bookmark any other page (other than the one single default page that has the video background).
Like this one for example:paypal.com/us/home
Honestly, this video background has been in place for a while now and yesterday was the first time I ever saw it.
Hi Jason,
Thanks for sharing a different perspective. I’m not sure Paypal has significant new potential customers. They’re pretty much at market saturation.
You should grab yourself a gravatar on your electricbiketech.com email address so you can show up here (and on many other weblogs) like Steve and I. Consider adding gravatars to your own website. With our FV Gravatar Cache plugin, gravatars won’t even slow down page loads.
Hi Jason, I went to the link you provided and… Got the same full screen video.
If PayPal wants to put a sales pitch on their home page fine, just give existing users a side door to log on so we can tend to business.
Additionally, I have a high speed cable connection and their “sales pitch” is slow starting and the video doesn’t flow it’s jerky. If they think that’s a good sales pitch they’d better get someone new to head up their marketing department.
I’m going to agree to disagree on PayPal not having to sign new customers. If you have all the potential customers in the world I’m not sure what you do next.
I’ll look into the gravatar. I mainly concentrate on authorship for SEO purposes.
If you want to see my face I’m here: linkedin.com/in/mrjkraft
FYI, I’m actively engaged with our designers now to get that video on sliders for one of our sites ‘www.ebikekit.com’. I will be sure to explore an immediate pause and also an opt-out option.
The power to show visitors someone converting a bike or a wheel being built when they first come to the site is ridiculously innovative marketing.
O.K. I found the side door…
paypal.com/login
… Pass it on!
I’d already found you Jason. SEO is about putting your best face forward at this point and that means gravatars. Full splash screens is a nightmare out of the past (I’ve been building websites long enough to have had to fight off the last round of flash splash screens). I’m not sure I’m ready to welcome them back. The Paypal video is wearing on my nerves now and having to use a side-door seems a bit primitive.
Most places where Paypal does not have good penetration is due to primitive American economic regulations (if a country doesn’t do what the US wants, America tries to cut them out of international trade altogether). At some point (probably soon) this jingoism will bite America’s internet companies in their own nose.
Videos won’t help.
Steve,
I’m curious as a student of marketing. Now that it’s not bothering you anymore with regard to running your business, if you were a new prospect that had never been to PayPal before, would the video background appeal to you?
Alec,
Google dictates what SEO is about and putting your face out there is about Google Authorship.
For example google “upper dublin police e-bikes” and you’ll see a snippet with my face. I don’t know much about gravatars but I think this is kind of the same thing. My little face will be up on our blog (the site is relatively new) in a couple weeks along with the rest of our staff contributing to the blog.
Appreciate your suggestions.
Setting up gravatars (which work with most WordPress weblogs, except the poor souls suckered into using Disqus: see our Thoughtful Comments plugin for a much faster loading self-hosted alternative) for all your email addresses takes all of about five minutes. Gravatars the fastest fix on the web for anonymity/visibility out there.
Google authorship is of course important for your weblog posts.
Google’s latest position is that SEO is about being genuinely of use to people: comments with suitable gravatars have much more impact and a much higher ration of clickthru to the original site. This is anecdotal but I manage a lot of websites.
Thank you Steve for that link. We dislike the new ‘watch a person drinking a coffee video’ while you wait for …. loading..
Bookmarked.
Jason asks: “if you were a new prospect that had never been to PayPal before, would the video background appeal to you?”
No… I do like videos online (Amazon Plus, YouTube) but to sell PayPal to potential buyers the home page in big FAST LOADING block letters I’d say:
PAYPAL… NO MONTHLY CHARGES OR FEES YOUR TOTAL COST… 2.9% PLUS 25¢ per transaction. FREE FUND TRANSFER TO THE BANK OF YOUR CHOICE FREE SHIPPING LABELS… FREE PACKING SLIPS
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE? NOPE… CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS!
PayPal works great for me for exactly the reasons I wrote above and that, IMO, is what will sell PayPal to others.
@SteveK, I agree that the video on the start page is using up precious bandwidth for those on cell phones. As I geek I see lots of challenges and reasons to NOT do this.
BUT, as a marketer it is a huge draw and has people linking from different places to the website. Purpose, purpose, purpose. If people think Paypal is outdated and old they will look for something new. The purpose may not be to get new customers, but to remind existing customers that they are inventive and proactive.
I love the PayPal video, but then it hasn’t affected the time it takes me to log in.
To me the video adds a wow factor and sets the website apart. It has really stuck in my head and I’m determined to get the same wow factor for my own site.
By the way, Jason, I just took a look at your site and was very impressed. Did you create it personally?
Thank you SteveK for that link. Finally I don’t have to watch some stupid, distracting video while I’m trying to enter my password!
I’m a small businessman and do my invoicing with music playing in the background. The video on Paypal’s new site sucks bandwidth and CPU power to the point of making my music skip.
It offers NOTHING of value to professionals. I am SO unimpressed with attempts at glitz. Paypal is BANKING and I don’t need the Facebook crowd showing up wanting to be entertained at a site that performs valuable functions for the business world.
Forbes reports this is some attempt to impress those more concerned with style than function. This strikes me as a very unserious gesture that will get their clientele second guessing their partnership with Paypal. Even if many businesses have better gear than I do, not all customers will and if we expect them to pay for our goods with Paypal, their resource hungry showboating is hurting the customer experience I am giving them by offering billing through Paypal.
For people like me who just want to get on with our transactions and ignore Paypal marketing schmucks attempt to “wow” us. As a semi=geek, I found SteveK’s suggested side door instantly to bypass the ridiculous Street scene panorama BS. Plenty of people aren’t familiar with URL syntax to stumble across these solutions but more importantly, why should the people in a hurry have to take the extra steps? Let the people with time to watch people sip java click stuff they don’t need..
Steve K hit it from the jump. “Opt out” is a must for the people who send these guys the majority of their money. For many of us, dull, drab, and boring serves a vital function, efficiency. The only people who seem to like it are marketing crowd types. Would someone please throw them a fabulous wine and cheese gala, hand them a few plaques for their artistic brilliance, and then put the site back the way it was?
Hi William,
You make some very good points. This video should really be a one time thing and then gone or at least come once/month or less. And it shouldn’t play on any mobile device at all.
Function should come before form.
I find I enter my password wrong more often and type slowing because the motion is distracting. I usually go there 2-3 times a day and having to keep clicking the pause button is annoying
Just use adblock to block video content on that page. Works.
PayPal’s new full-screen-video login page is just AWFUL. I hate it. It’s like having a TV commercial thrust in your face each time you log in. I pray to God this isn’t the way the Web is going.
You must be joking. The full video login page is a disaster. It’s busy, makes it harder to just do a simple login to use my account, and it’s a CPU hog. This is yet another descent into the web’s ongoing “form over function” Hell. Make everything HD, video-based, and animated, but useless and confusing. Many many moons ago, it used to be standard advice to web designers to NOT make their pages too busy, and to not have main pages contain too much image or video content because it made them slower to load and harder to navigate.
Now, we have fast computers and high bandwidth, and we have run amok. “Yay!” We’ve got fast computers and high bandwidth. Let’s all run out and waste it.
I really hate the emphasis on videos. I click on a link for a news story and cringe when there is a 3 minute video for a story I could have skimmed in 30 seconds. At least put the transcript below so I can see if the video is even worth watching. Especially when the video is devoid of content and just a talking head for 3 minutes. Or a talking head and 3 still frames of the event/person.
Just give me the 2-3 pictures and the 3 paragraph story.
Hi Mr Max,
As a developer and a user of computers, I’m completely with you. I threw out over 6 GB of bloated programs today (200 MB when they should be 20 MB at most) to keep my SSD running fast. I find most of the time I use the lightest programs most as they open quickly and run fast.
With websites we should be even more careful of what we include as who knows what device they end up on.
Hi Matt,
I’ve given up on sites which use a lot of video where there should be stories. Guardian.co.uk (has a US edition now if you’re an American) is mostly text and doesn’t miss too many major stories (although their Ukraine coverage has been appalling anti-Russian jingoism, not worthy of what pledges to be independent media).
If you list some of the offenders, I can probably give you well written alternatives.
Install adblock plus (plugin for either Chrome or Firefox, if you are using MSIE you need to stop immediately).
Then enter a custom filter: paypalobjects.com/webstatic/mktg/*
Paste that in. You are all done. No more dumb marketing from Paypal.
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the tip.
I’ve stopped using AdBlock and run Ghostery instead (as it goes after js and bad sites: tracking software). Ghostery keeps the CPU down and helps sites load much faster. It’s also very easy to grant per site exceptions. Unfortunately Ghostery cannot easily stop an HTML 5 video from its home site. Blocking all video on Paypal might be an idea.
I wonder if there is not a lighter weight way to block this content than reenabling AdBlock.
I hope they go back to MsDos. It loaded fast and I didn’t need to upgrade my system.
Hi Steve C,
Great, you can update your computer to 16 GB memory and quad processor with regular browser restarts. While you are at it, you can upgrade your internet connection at home, work and on the road
Enjoy the Paypal splashscreen video on all your new tech. I’ll be enjoying dinner in the garden with my girlfriend instead.
I hope that the person in charge of UX gets severely reprimanded for this complete fail. If I designed a page like Paypal’s, when I was doing web design at university, I would’ve be marked down! Not to mention that at home I have broadband, yes, but it is very slow. I didn’t even know they were animated until I had to leave the computer for a bit before logging on. And at work my boss didn’t log into Paypal for over a week because he thought it was a ‘spam site’.
Thanks for sharing your experiences Daniel. I agree about the marking down on basic UX principles.
At the very least, there should be an easy opt out for video which at least gets rid of the video until there is a new one.
Well I have to say I think this is a great move by Paypal design team, The videos work on many levels, I actually found this article as i was searching about full screen video trends in web design at the moment.
I love this effect and will start to apply it to some of my own sites.
I agree, the UX designer should be fired along with whoever approved this moronic decision. Whoever thought it was a good idea to force an extreme close-up video on users with each log-in is an idiot. The horrible user experience makes me loathe PayPal more each time I log in.
Tell you what, it is a problem for me. Not everyone has TONs of bandwidth, and given that we live a ‘remote’ lifestyle we depending on wireless internet via cell phones. Not only is this new paypal video a MASSIVE use of our costly bandwidth, it is very slow to load when in the fringes.
And after getting through it, I often have to click through yet another advertisement before ‘going to my account’ so I can actually USE the service…
Not everyone has massive bandwidth available, and what is there can be costly… Know I am a rather off the mainroad, but still – reminds me of when I use to force our HUI programmers to test their stuff on 5 year old machines…
Will be trying some of the hints here as workarounds, thanks.
Hi, thanks for all comment here.
I noticed this annoying video a few months ago whilst working in Sweden. I started to complain loudly about it on the PayPal forums, but those comments including a number of other fellow PayPal users comments have been removed.
Oh well, I got back to Cyprus where I live and thankfully PayPal had not implemented the STUPID video in the Cyprus version of PayPal, until yesterday. Now they show the same spineless video about that café and a bunch of badly styled cowboys playing guitar like a duck in desperate need for a WC.
Just because they CAN implement such totally meaningless and distracting video does not necessarily mean that they HAVE to do it.
The video is so distracting that I can’t even find the login box.. I have notice that if you quickly press login twice on the button, it will redirect you to a page without the video. So that is my remedy.
To PayPal: KILL YOUR DARLINGS!!!!
PayPal Login Video WTF?!?!
Hi all, Jumped in on this late. Personally, I like the video on Paypal’s site, as the visual grabs your attention immediately (except for those with lag issues). Not being a great web designer (wordpress templates at best) can someone tell me how they did it? Is this a resizable WP template that I can find? Thanks, Sean
WTF? “While I have grave misgivings about Paypal, I have to say their new look is a huge improvement. Minimalism with muted colours and tasteful text.”
Yes, sure it is… Another douchebag who goes “Ooohh… the shiny!” whenever one of his cretinous web designer ‘friends’ comes up with yet another way of making a website more difficult to read and therefore use. Paypal have gone literally mad over the past few years, with their ‘so light it’s almost white!’ text on e-mails, so you can hardly see who you sent money to, or who you are receiving it from, and today they have turned their entire website into a Fisher Price toy! Hideous grey text, huge text and hideous ‘almost white, but not quite’ grey backrounds to boxes, on a white background, so you can’t see where one section ends and the other begins. Truly disgraceful. What a bunch of sheeplike lemmings web ‘designers’ are.
LOL at the comment from ‘Wayne Kille’ (shouldn’t that be ‘Wayne Kerr’? (Wanker, get it?)
“I love the PayPal video, but then it hasn’t affected the time it takes me to log in.”
“To me the video adds a wow factor and sets the website apart. It has really stuck in my head and I’m determined to get the same wow factor for my own site.”
Yes, YOU’RE the target market for this video crap – another braindead WEB DESIGNER who would follow other ‘web designers’ off a cliff if it was ‘the shiny’ thing to do. You idiot.
The flash image or video is one of the most annoying homescreens that I have seen when trying to log into a site. It is distracting, and needless to say creates a lag when I’m on a slow internet connection. I hope they just remove this from the site. I also hope that those idiot designers from paypal are reading what has been said here.
Hi Joe,
This video home page from Paypal does seem to be one of the most misguided design efforts on a major site in the last two years.
The Guardian newspaper’s new look is running a close second. Instead of hundreds of comments on a single page, they now paginate their comments five per page. It appears to be a play for more page views and to stifle the comments section (progressively more right wing agenda, with which their readers vehemently disagree). At least The Guardian’s bad ideas seem to have some kind of purpose. Paypal appears just to be shooting its users in the foot.
I dislike video backgrounds and auto-start videos. Paypal’s video background is creepy. It feels like a hacker has hacked their site.
Seems to be a trend…remember when Flash came out? https://www.airbnb.com went for it as well.
Honestly, I feel relief reading your negative assessment of this Paypal Video Scheme. It feels good to read of other’s frustration. Every time I come to it I feel some anger. Because, for one, their new motto about sellers being people, ‘we the people’, forcing me to experience these ‘people’ doing human things, is manipulative and disrespectful. They are attempting to manipulate my thinking based on experience. Experience is the real story. Not these videos. If Paypal wants its sellers to be positively viewed, then help them all, as sellers, to become honest, authentic participators in the world. Don’t try to alter our psychology for profit.
And, so, it is not only distracting, it just ups the level of distrust in our acceptable marketing tactics.
The video background is completely stupid. I only have 15GB of data a month and this is a complete waste of it.
Hi All, I’ve just installed a video feature on our home page and I’m trying to find out how video is being received / liked / disliked by people.
I’d be interested in your views on the idea that the video feature is more suited to our site than to PayPal’s, as our site has a stronger visual requirement?
http://travelbuddy.mobi
Hi,
On firefox (I use firefox ESR 10.0.12), you can apparently block it by any of these 2 methods: use the flashblock extension. Today’s latest version 1.5.17 blocks html5 videos as well as flash, in about:config, set media.autoplay.enabled the false. This second method on palemoon seems to require that javascript be blocked too. I use yesscript to blacklist sites for javascript, but the whole site probably won’t work without javascript. I didn’t investigate this problem any further. So far, I’m happy with flashblock.
I hope it will do you as much good as it does to me to regain control over your visual environment.
You suck balls Paypal. 16 years of using you and Feebay and now you gotta slow down my payment stuff? Bite me.
Well that’s one way to put it Chastity. I think you are even more bothered by the video than Joe, Kelly, Al, Roy, Daniel, ihategrey and I all put together.
Slowing down their clients access to what should be a simple Payment utility does seem rather an own goal though. Paypal has still not relented, at least not here in Europe.
The videos are so obnoxious, I can’t stand them! I’ve been meaning to use paypal.com/login instead but I forget and then I want to punch my screen.
I am freaked out every time I am logging in to PayPal. These moving backgrounds with people or just their body parts in motion are so creepy and I never know what to expect. It feels like someone is going to jump out at me! Really disturbing commotion when you try to concentrate on entering your password correctly. Just annoying and creepy!
The point that everyone is missing is that marketing decisions are made based on the masses and mass appeal. Your individual opinions are just that opinions without supporting data. To indict paypal based on your personal beliefs without even a clue as to their demographic data as well as new markets they are trying to reach is an egregious error.
Also if we listened to the nay-sayers, breakthrough advertising like ‘Got Milk’ would have never happened. Milks biggest campaign ever was almost shut down because some corporate moron couldn’t get past the fact that it’s bad english to say ‘Got Milk.’
So…BULLY to Paypal for innovating and being progressive. BOO to those nay-sayers who are putting it out their personal opinions as if they are solid business data…grow up.
Hi Kevin,
The point you are missing is that most of the people on this thread are existing Paypal customers, even heavy users of their services and site.
By annoying us, Paypal is eroding long term client goodwill. Like a block of ice, the melting at first seems inconsequential. In the end, there is nothing left of the ice but a puddle.
Microsoft worked hard at eroding client goodwill for decades. That worked out well for them did it not? Both Apple and Google managed to emerge from nowhere and pass Microsoft. Apple’s market cap is about double that of Microsoft. Nokia abused client goodwill and ended up as an irrelevant and broken subsidiary of Microsoft. eBay has abused both sellers and buyers trust and is now struggling to fight off Amazon.
If Paypal were paying attention instead of overpaying progressive designer bullies to teach Paypal how to erode client goodwill, Paypal would take them out to the gallows instead.
The technical fixes aren’t difficult. Anyone with a cookie should not have to face the video more than once. I’m not sure if it’s Paypal’s web development team is so inept or if some overcoiffed designer is forcing them at gunpoint to sabotage their own site.
Thanks Alec for taking the time to reply to Kevin. I didn’t realize that a topic as innocuous as this one could draw trolls… I was wrong.
Hi Steve,
Kevin’s underlying point is a good one: the pressure is on for immediate results. This week’s sales charts are more important than steady growth. Big companies care more about short term growth than long term good will these days. Public companies are held to ransom by stock option executives who get paid based on this month or last quarter.
Privately held or family companies tend to have more respect for their clients.
Paypal could have it both ways here by allowing visitors/users to opt-out of the video. Why are you not listening to Paypal?
I hate this paypal home page huge video. At least it should immediateble disappear when I click login.