Guest Post | How To: Have Success With Online Video
While online video can greatly improve visitor experience and boost conversion rates on your website, video is only effective if implemented properly. Making sure your videos are easy to find, contain compelling content, and drive your visitors to take action are fundamental to video success. Follow these best practices to make sure your videos accomplish your organization’s goals:Keep your videos short: Online viewers have a low attention span and are likely to watch your video for only 30 – 45 seconds. Short and concise videos (15 – 30 seconds) are great, but if you need to include more content make sure you don’t exceed two minutes.
Strategically place your video on your site: Your video should be appropriately located on your site, either on the homepage or subpages. Make sure you clearly know the goal of your video (to educate? engage? convert?) and place the video on your site accordingly. If your video is high quality and conversion oriented, you should consider placing it on your homepage. If your video educates visitors on a particular issue or product, place it on an appropriate subpage. Strategically placing your video will help visitors achieve their goals on your site and boost overall conversion rates.
Make sure visitors will find your videos: Your high quality video content is only useful if visitors can find your videos, so make sure to optimize your videos for search engines. Posting to multiple video sharing platforms, properly tagging and describing your videos, and distributing via social media will help users find your videos. If you’re hosting video yourself, submit a Video Sitemap to google to ensure your video content is indexed.
Include a Call to Action: Your video is most effective if it drives visitors to take action on your site. Make sure to include a Call to Action either in your video, the description, or surrounding text. Use any of the following techniques for integrating a Call to Action:
- Edited into your video as a “lower third”: During the editing process, place appropriate call to action text as an overlay on your video (for example, “call 1-800-245-9999 to learn more!”)
- In the Description: Write a Call to Action in your video description. If posting to YouTube or Vimeo, include a link to your site or the appropriate landing page along with the Call to Action.
- As an Annotation (YouTube): Use YouTube’s Annotation feature to add interactive commentary to your video, such as speech bubbles or notes. These annotations can link to other videos or can contain Call to Action text.
- As an Overlay (YouTube): If you’ve signed up for YouTube Promoted Videos, you can include a Call to Action overlay on the bottom portion of your video. This video can contain additional information related to your video or link visitors to an external website.
- In your video’s script: Simply integrate a Call to Action into the dialogue of your video. For example, the narrator could say “Call us today for a free consultation!”