Online Experience Is Trending Toward Using More Video

Published on Monday, 08 April 2013 07:27

Darin McGilvra

It’s important for Web designers and their customers to keep up with online trends, such as the online experience is becoming much more about video.

People became so used to the video entertainment of television while growing up, and now they are enjoying the ability to control and interact with that experience by being able to control that experience by being able to start and stop the video and even search for the video they want to view.

Video also is becoming increasingly easy to create and upload online. The average person can take a smartphone and create a simple instructional video and upload it to YouTube within a couple hours. And the average smartphone can take high-definition digital video that will work for pretty much any situation.

Many businesses are actually saving money by creating videos. These videos can provide instructions on how to set up software on a computer or put together products that come with some assembly required. These types of instructional videos can dramatically reduce the number of calls received by customer service reps, so that businesses can reduce the number of reps needed, or at least improve customer service by reducing the wait time for customer calls.

Video also can be used to introduce products and allow customers to get a sneak peek of things to come from a business. This can generate excitement and create an online buzz for a business. If a video like this goes viral on YouTube, a business’ sales could go through the roof.

Of course, what many business people understand best is simple numbers, especially when it comes to marketing. With video, there is little doubt that it is more effective at driving traffic to a website than just written content or banner ads alone.

A report published by MediaMind at the end of 2012 showed that the click-through rate for video was 2.84 percent, which was 27.4 times more often than banner ads and 12 times more than rich media ads. This means people that view a video are 27.4 times as likely to click on the video link to the website than those that view a banner ad and they are 12 times as likely to click on the video link than click on a rich media ad.

Those kinds of numbers are hard to ignore. The great thing is that it is much easier to design websites with video in mind by using HTML5. The coding is much more common sense than Flash, which is considered to be “dead” by many Web designers.

The nice thing about HTML5 is that it doesn’t use embed codes to place videos on a website. Instead, your website can host the video itself and run it right on the website. This way, you don’t have to worry about the hosting website having server problems and preventing the video you have on your website from running.

Video is so visually striking, it is easy to see why it is becoming the preferred medium online. Make sure it becomes a big part of the next website you have designed.

Darin McGilvra

Darin McGilvra has been a professional writer since 1997. He currently writes about personal finances, information technology and sports for numerous websites, including mycashtime.com, mchelper.com, and Yahoo! Sports.

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