Using Videos On Your Website: Exploring the Whys & Hows

Why & How to Use Videos  

On Your Website

Videos are powerful.

There. We've said it. Videos on your website are incredibly powerful tools you can use to convert visitors into loyal customers. It's true that uploading videos to your website can increase your site's loading time, and that's not a good thing. However, this can be removed by using a few special tricks which we're explaining further on down the page.

For now, let us walk you through the benefits of using videos on your website, followed by seven tips on how to create amazing videos, and finally, how to include them on your website pages.

Benefits of Using Videos On Your Website

A picture says a thousand words, but in the case of a video, it's probably about a million. They're all the rage on social media, and we think they should be on your website too! Here are five benefits videos can bring to your website:

1. Videos tell stories - storytelling is a powerful tool you can use to engage your audience. A story can take your audience from someone who is mildly interested, to a loyal customer. From painting a picture of how your products or services will benefit them, you help them imagine life with it. Consequently, they'll buy it!

2. Videos keep visitors longer - if you're surfing the web, you're looking for something, be it entertainment or information. A video can provide both. Due to the very nature of video, a person cannot skim read it. They need to stop and watch the video, which keeps them on your page for longer. Search engines like Google see the length of time a person visits a page for as an indicator as to the quality of the page. If a visitor leaves a page immediately, search engines take that to mean the page was not relevant to their search, or of a low quality. When a visitor stays longer, be it to watch a video or read the content, search engines see that as a sign that the page did provide the visitor with what they wanted, and that it must be of good quality. Consequently, that page can rise in the SERPs or search engine results page ranking.

3. Videos build trust  - trust is key to being a successful business. If someone does not trust your business, they're unlikely to buy from it. A video lets you introduce your business, the people behind it and what you offer your customers. It puts things into visual terms that words just can't provide.

4. Videos deliver messages fast  - a video can both show and tell a message at the same time. It also takes up less space on a page, leaving you the ability to go into further details without overwhelming a visitor.

5. Videos are helpful - want to show someone how your product works? Create a how to video. Need to demonstrate what to expect when someone visits your workplace? Use a video. You can even share video testimonials from your customers and footage of them using your product in their home. 

7 Tips On Creating High Performing Website Videos

As we know, videos hold immense power, and a well crafted video can turn a website page from unappealing and with a high bounce rate, to one which has a high conversion rate and goes viral! So, we've put together this list of 7 tips on creating high performing website videos.

A well crafted video can do amazing things for a business website. There are seven characteristics of a high performing video and they are:

  1. Genuine - a video needs to be realistic and genuine. Fake doesn't sell.  
  2. Humourous - not suitable for all videos, but if you can add some humour, it's very appreciated by the audience.
  3. Short - people are busy, and don't have the time to watch a lengthy video when searching a website. Keep your longer videos for YouTube.
  4. Audio - whether it's a voice over, people talking in the video or music, audio adds an extra element of interest.
  5. Uniqueness - if your video looks like everyone else's, why should your audience watch it? Be different.
  6. Branding - brand your video with your logo and your business colours to make it easily identifiable and a brand asset.
  7. Interesting - keep your video content interesting so the audience wants to start and keep on watching.

How to Add Videos to Your Website

One of the potential downsides of videos is that they are large files. Large files can slow websites down. A slow website loading speed is off-putting to visitors and can affect your SERP ranking negatively. Having a super fast web host can help reduce this effect, as can uploading your video to YouTube and using an MP4 file type.

We recommend that for optimum website speeds, you use our inbuilt video tools in the CMS. This requires you to first upload your video to YouTube and then add the link to it using our video tool. Here's our demonstration video on how to add a video on YouTube to your website using the new Content Box editor:

As the video is hosted on YouTube but only shown when someone visits your website, it does not slow it down. Our CMS makes adding website videos a breeze, just like it does the building of a website. To learn more about our CMS, there's no better way than to grab yourself a free trial and get into it. 

Tags: marketing  

Posted: Monday 29 July 2019


 


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