Why is Bubble Guru stupid? Let me explain…
Have you heard about Bubble Guru? It's a new service that allows you to engage your website visitors with a simple video message. You can instantly record a message using your webcam and it will pop-up on your webpage every time it loads, play fully, then close itself.
Let's put this idea in perspective. Say you visit your local store… let's make it an electronics store. Say you are walking up to the door and as soon as you get in, the CEO of the company is right in your face, stopping you with a generic message describing his company and engaging you with an explanation of why you should stick around. Let's say you get this message every time you visit, and let's say you are not given the option of whether to get this message or not… it just happens as soon as you walk in the door.
Think about it… do you need this message? Does the CEO need to give you this message in order to turn you into a paying customer? Would this message just be annoying? After all, doesn't your typical electronics store have enough ways of engaging visitors, with the posters and cardboard stands and flashy displays and friendly employees that are ready to help as soon as you ask? Does a 10-second message really engage people more than all the content (products, displays, employee information) the store already has?
It would be nice to perform an experiment just to test the effectiveness of identical storefronts, one with the CEO standing behind the door, mouthing off his speech at every single visitor, the other without. My hypothesis is that the short greeting message wouldn't increase or decrease the profitability of a storefront, and would probably just be a waste of time. After all, the customers are already in the door at the point of delivery… I would think that at this point, the best strategy is to get them to the deals and start selling right away.
If this example doesn't illustrate the uselessness of a service like Bubble Guru, I don't know what would. It's worth mentioning that a bandwidth-heavy element like a video, loading for every user who visits your site, is bound to be a pain for users on dial-up and slow WiFi networks. It's also going to annoy every repeat visitor who has seen the video before and doesn't need to see it again. Finally, no matter how compelling this video message is, it's not nearly as important as having compelling body content and a highly usable UI.
All this isn't to say that you shouldn't have a video greeting on your site… I think they can be a great way to get personal with visitors. They just shouldn't be automatic and forced on everyone that visits. I say put a button on your site that says something like, "View a message from the CEO/blogger/site creator/etc." that when pressed, pops up a video or starts a video that's already on the page. Bubble Guru offers this option already, and in my opinion, it should be the default. This way, you get the engaging value of a video message on your site without any of the annoyance. That's a smart compromise.
If I walked into a store and the CEO popped up in front of me waffling on, I'd turn around and walk straight out again. The same applies to web pages - I don't want crap in my face.