What is the impact of videos embedded on a website?
#webdev #SEO #Marketing
Answers
First, lets support video.
Video is one of the most effective ways of visually communicating a brands position, product, services, solutions and so forth. Positioning a video above the fold on the home page, and ONLY the home page, is a solid play as the brand demonstrates its impact to the consumer. Videos have the ability to be measured with tools, focused on CTR, Average view time, Average conversion from video to PLP, PDP, Content Page, etc. a Reminder that the best Amazon pages, have a video available to users for “How To” and “Reviews”, etc. Remember that on a lot of eRetailers, a short video is used all the time!
Notice the videos in the left rail. EVERY PDP will have this.
There are 2 primary aspects of including video in the homepage banner experience.
1) Adhere to Google Guidelines. This is a very common experience, especially for eComm, but there are rules you MUST adhere to. a. https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/6006843?hl=en 2) The video MUST provide value. Anything the brand publishes to the website should be Expert-Authoritative-Trustworthy products, services, and solutions. The video should map to value for the customer. It should not be a deal or promotion or a sales-specific tactic. Notice the Home Depot Example, where videos are tutorials, and product reviews from the manufacturer. Simply educating the consumer and pushing trust, expertise, and authority on the product.
Remember Google's primary goal is to provide the absolute best products, services, and solutions to consumers and a website that simply produces VALUE, versus pushes the customer to spend, spend, spend, is less #E-A-T.
Also consider that for the makeup and self-care industry, video tutorials and how-to content is critical.
OK.
Lets refute videos in banner ads next.
The primary issue of including multimedia on the site is its impact to speed and specifically mobile performance. Even if a video is Cached and compressed, it is going to significantly impact performance in comparison to a lightweight site with no video.
A video is sometimes a trap. It is NOT optimizable. It is NOT forever and likely will need to be updated with the times, depending on the industry. Videos are NOT the goal of a site, not even for YouTube or Vimeo. The goal is value, measured by metrics. If the site is not producing to KPI’s a video is NOT going to alter that experience. Videos are seen to be more harmful to a site's overall experience, than helpful if the core fundamentals of E-A-T are not initially met.
This article discussed the pros and cons as well.
Lastly, I am certainly not here to deter or support video usage, just share POV. It has its absolute purpose and clearly a driver of attention, social reach, and brand position, but MUST be implemented properly.
My actual advice is to A/B test it. Please. Work with analytics to measure the performance, the metrics, and the intent of the video, before you cut over to it for certain. Consider your competitors and your future consumers. Your existing customers that come back, will not care. They have brand affinity. But if the majority of the competition is not doing it, maybe consider not as well. But, sometimes we have to take a risk to rise above.
While videos can certainly increase engagement on a site, its also important to consider the size and speed of them. User engagement drops off significantly when the site experience is slow so making sure you use a platform that is able to serve these types of assets quickly is key to delighting the user as well as keeping your site speed up.