Why You Should Incorporate Video Into Your Website

What’s the hottest and most impactful trend in website development? Video. Why? Because it works. Not just for promoting your product or service, but for building a bond with your customers. Video helps people get to know, like, and trust you. Interacting with your audience via online videos will help you to get your message across in an interesting way. Videos keep people on your website longer and engage them with your content.

What makes your product or service better than your competitors? Video is a perfect mechanism for showing off your differentiators.

So what types of video should you have on your website? Depending on your company there are many different types of videos to consider, including:

1. Product or service overview and demonstration videos
2. Educational or How-To videos
3. CEO communications, including corporate responsibility messages
4. Explainer videos
5. Case study and customer testimonial videos
6. Event videos
7. Expert interviews
8. Company history and culture videos
9. Virtual tour videos

According to a report from HubSpot Research, 54% of consumers want to see videos instead of more traditional methods such as email newsletters. Plus, viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text. (Source: Insivia)

For an example of how a video shot in a single take can be edited into multiple sections and placed throughout a website for maximum impact, see this example from Successful Culture International.

Some Interesting Statistics:

Industry studies have shown that the popularity and effectiveness of video is increasing at a rapid rate. Some relevant statistics include:

• Businesses using video to grow company revenue 49% faster year-over-year than organizations without video (Source: Aberdeen)
• The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video (Source: MistMedia)
• Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more (Source: Visually)
• Video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines (Source: Brightcove)
• “How to” searches on YouTube are up 70% year-over-year (Source: Google)
• 4 times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it (Source: eMarketer)
• The average conversion ratio for websites using video is 8%, compared to 2.9%for those that don’t use video. (Source: Aberdeen)
• Blog posts incorporating video attract 3 times as many inbound links as blog posts without video (Source: Moz)
• Almost 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store (Source: ThinkWithGoogle).
• Keep it short: Nearly two-thirds of consumers prefer video under 60 seconds (Source: Animoto).
• 20% of your viewers will click away from a video in 10 seconds or fewer. In addition, you’ll lose about 1/3 of your viewers by 30 seconds, 45% of them by 1 minute and almost 60% by 2 minutes. (Source (Visible Measures)
• Studies have found that the simple mention of the word “video” in a subject heading can increase the click-through rate of an e-mail blast by 13 percent. (Source: IQnection)
• Companies using video enjoy 41% more web traffic from search than non-users (Source: Aberdeen)

Getting started with video

If you don’t already have video on your website, you are behind and losing ground to your competitors. Regardless of whether you are a product- or service-based business, you should be leveraging the power of video. Incorporating video content on your website will provide an instant positive impact. Video is no longer just one piece of the overall marketing and communications plan. It needs to play a central role in your outreach efforts.

Forrester Research takes the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” one step further by adding that a one-minute video is worth 1.8 million words.

Considering that 46 percent of people who watch a video ad on a business website take action after viewing it, it makes sense to include video in your marketing strategy. Even a minute-long video can tell customers and new consumers all they need to know in a fraction of the time it would take them to click on and read specific pages. Time is precious, so having video content on your website will enhance your user’s experience, attract more customers and boost your bottom line.

You don’t need to have a huge budget for video. You could do it yourself, but you need to be very careful about the quality of the video you produce. 62% of consumers are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand that published a poor quality video. (Source: Brightcove).

You should select and agency that understands your overall communication strategy, so the content of the video aligns with your brand and strategy.

Here are three recent examples of integrating video with web we worked on:

Please contact Adam Levin at alevin@informationexperts.com for more information.

‘Media Marketing Concept’ Vector Graphic: Makyzz – Freepik.com