Using Video on websites

John Scanlon  August 12 2010 03:35:31 PM

Video is a very good way to provide content and to connect with your audience on your website.  The idea is to use it to help engage visitors with your site, products or stories.   Australians spend a lot of time watching online videos with increasing popularity of watching videos on a phone.  The average duration for online video is 4.4 minutes*.  Video capability is a fast growing feature for small business websites, but more so for online retailers.  

You need to be specific in your video strategy designing the video for your goal.  Videos can increase loyalty, site goals or traffic.  Your video goals may be to introduce key people, part of the sales cycle or demonstrate products.  For instance use educational videos to increase site loyality, use product review videos for conversion goals and use viral videos to increase traffic.  The videos types may be: Humour, How Tos, Demonstrations, Testimonials, Classic branding Commercial, Documentary, Short Film, Interviews or Abstract Viral.

A documentary style video works best for information heavy content.  An educational style video will establish trust, simplify a process or reduce buyer concerns.  Educational videos may include, How Tos, Induction, Safety, Benefits & Features or Online Learning.  Viral videos need a good budget and design, they should be original, extraordinary, unexpected or funny, mysterious or sexy.

Ask who is your audience, how do they learn, where do they watch, which style do they prefer and how will they respond.  Direct your message to each audience group.

The video quality is important but there is a process required to create the video which takes time and money. Don't forget to measure your goals perhaps using one of these methods:
- enter your details
- download this file
- buy this product
- deposit now
- like
- rate it
- quick poll

You should also orientate your Video search engine optimisation (SOE).  Search engines are completing to provide blended search results and like videos but can't categorise them easily. To do this you can use Video site maps which is an XML based way to inform the search engine about your video.  Other video SOE include using keywords in the filename, using titles, description and tags.  The videos should be embedded into relevant pages in your site.  These days, many sites host their videos for free on YouTube and them embed this on their own site.  But be aware that YouTube will then own your video content and their own goals are to increase YouTube search results not your own site search results.

There is anecdotal stories of increased conversion rate on sites when video is added, indeed popular USA site www.zappos.com will make 50,000 product videos in 2010 and reckon the videos increase sales buy 6-30%.  For higher costs purchases a video explaining premium product benefits are excellent.  

Other internet users are always looking for online content to validate or reinforce opinions about products, sites and businesses.   Use your video content along side your social media marketing strategy and monitor user feedback or talk.  Big brands like Sony, Coca-Cola and Nike even run submitted video campaigns for their own marketing and research objectives.  

In summary the considerations are similar for any web page or marketing content.  What is the purpose, the audience, is it relevant, valuable, searchable and are your results measurable.


* Comscore & Nielson

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