How Biteable leverages Storyblocks to deliver an exceptional product and drive free trial conversions

Biteable is an online video creation platform that enables users to easily create professional videos using pre-designed templates, animations, stock footage, images, and music. Founded in 2014, Biteable caters to a wide range of users, including businesses and individuals looking to create videos for a variety of use cases, from social media to presentations. Biteable’s freemium business model relies on all users starting a seven-day free trial experience, during which they can create watermarked videos and then download upon deciding to upgrade. 

Biteable came to Storyblocks in 2019, looking to provide a greater variety of content to their customers. While they had previously partnered with other stock media providers, Biteable now uses Storyblocks as their preferred third-party provider for stock footage. 

Biteable considers Storyblocks a “critical part” of their free trial experience, enabling the availability and usability that differentiate the free trial experience as an important touchpoint in their customer acquisition strategy.

How the Storyblocks API integration works

The Biteable team integrated the Storyblocks API into their built-in library of pre-made assets, which includes stock footage, images, animations, and music. With this API integration, users can quickly and easily find the content they need to start creating a video.

This quick delivery of high-quality and relevant footage is what enables a seamless editing experience that helps convert users to paying customers. As Brent Chudoba, Chief Executive Officer of Biteable, puts it: “There are a million reasons for a user to walk away in that first journey, so nailing the things that the user thinks should be easy has to go right.”

Storyblocks as a differentiator and driver of paid subscriptions

Chudoba highlights that Storyblocks emerged as a better choice over other stock media providers like Shutterstock due to its alignment with the company’s business model and cost-efficiency. Initially, Biteable utilized Shutterstock for its extensive library, but high costs – sometimes as high as $99 per stock media clip – prompted a shift. Storyblocks’ pricing model provided a more cost-effective solution without compromising on quality, making it an ideal fit for their needs.

The pricing model that Storyblocks offers works great for us as a premium content offering that is suited toward our business model.

Brent Chudoba

Chief Executive Officer of Biteable

Unlike Shutterstock’s pay-per-use model, Storyblocks’ subscription-based service also offers extensive flexibility and affordability, which aligns better with Biteable’s goal to empower users with low-cost or free video creation tools. While Pexels provides free content, too, Chudoba notes that Storyblocks continues to stand out with its reliability and high-quality footage, particularly suited to Biteable’s business audience. The premium footage and reliable API support Storyblocks offers have made it the preferred choice for Biteable’s footage library, ensuring a dependable and valuable resource for its growing B2B audience in the long term.

Enhanced product availability and usability

Chudoba and his team are focused on delivering a stellar product that, above all else, performs how customers expect it to, emphasizing that “availability and usability are the key themes for Biteable.” Whether it is speed, quality, or relevance, Chudoba notes that without the product fundamentals working smoothly – including stock footage integrations – a product offering can be “completely crushed” if it’s not doing its job as well as expected. 

Storyblocks is especially helpful in delivering on this functionality when previous API integrations – particularly from free stock media providers – were causing issues with content deliverability. Chudoba recalls one major issue where the results from other stock libraries weren’t being retrieved fast enough, so content would break and URLs would not render correctly in the Biteable platform. Since every single video created on Biteable is unique to whatever a user makes, it’s crucial that retrieving, rendering, and delivering videos happens quickly and accurately.

You can’t have availability and usability if things are breaking when you try to build your video. With Storyblocks, we’ve found no major problems, and it’s been more reliable.

– Brent Chudoba

The results remain clear: Currently, over 80% of Biteable users who use stock footage to create videos download stock footage directly from the Storyblocks API integration.

Curating a free trial experience that converts

Chudoba also notes how important a quick search engine and relevant content are to creating a valuable free trial experience that converts. With thousands of worldwide users logging into the platform daily, the search experience “has to be fast” and customers must “have a good range of content” to choose from. Which makes Storyblocks’ footage library of over two million diverse video assets an invaluable part of curating a positive activation experience for Biteable users.

“Our integration with Storyblocks has been really successful, and I think customers enjoy that, too. Not only are we going to present them with something relevant, but even if it’s not the best fit for their video, they can go search for something that better fits their needs.” – Brent Chudoba, Chief Executive Officer of Biteable

While Chudoba notes that conversion rates can be tricky in the world of video creation given how often they can fluctuate, user activation is closely tied to the conversion and retention that Biteable aims to achieve with each free trial experience.

“Our funnel is all pretty interwoven, so conversion and retention are pretty closely tied to activation. We have to do a good job of activating to make any of those other things work. With Storyblocks, it’s been very successful with all the work we’ve done so far.” – Brent Chudoba, Chief Executive Officer of Biteable

Conclusion

Integrating Storyblocks’ API into their video editor has not only helped customers create videos faster and more accurately, but has also supported a seamless free trial experience that converts and retains customers long-term.

The Storyblocks API has become a vital part of driving Biteable’s customer acquisition strategy via the free trial experience, while being simple enough to integrate into their platform by getting the fundamentals right. All this, as Chudoba notes, is vital to helping Biteable deliver on its ultimate mission to make video creation more accessible.

“We’re always trying to find ways to help users and help them bring their vision to life, faster. What Storyblocks offers works best for us.” – Brent Chudoba, Chief Executive Officer of Biteable