According to Website Magazine’s cover story for its April 2009 issue, online video is the fastest-growing type of content on the Web. Online video can create a dynamic and content-rich website experience for users; for marketers and website owners, it can provide an excellent opportunity to interact more fully with users, promote products and services and increase time on site.
Almost all companies can find a legitimate and beneficial reason for using video and not doing so can lead to a missed opportunity. Any website that sells products can benefit by including video on how to use, assemble a product or, even, reveal an unconventional use of the product. Any website that sells services can use video to present case studies, to offer a small sample of a service to entice a user to purchase further services, or to showcase client testimonials in a most compelling way.
The fastest and easiest way to implement video on a website is by putting the video on a video sharing site, such as YouTube. Sharing sites will let you upload a video and will provide code for embedding the video using a simple cut and paste. Most of the popular blog platforms also allow for easy video embedding through plug-ins or widgets. Once established, you can take advantage of Web 2.0 to further spread your video on the Net uploading the video onto sites like Facebook, MySpace and Delicious.
Having realized the potential of online video, you may desire the next level of implementation which is to create videos clips directly and add a Flash video player to your website. Doing so will allow for higher resolution video and will also prevent users from abandoning your website to pursue more videos on the video sharing site. If you can find the budget, it is advisable to use a professional video production company that will give your video the sophisticated, polished look that will best convey the professionalism of your business. Additionally, it’s important to have an effective system in place to manage both your videos and their associated metadata in order to reap the full benefits of your video library without excessive overhead.
A few important rules to follow to ensure a successful online video implementation on your website are:
a) Keep usage consistent with what users expect from your site making sure that video supports your message and doesn’t take the user in a different direction;
b) Integrate video content with other, non-video content rather than creating a separate video area likely to be overlooked by your visitors;
c) When choosing a video player, make sure usability is a strong priority.
Mercury Web Solutions works with an excellent video producer, Samuel M. Goldstein Productions. If you are interested in putting video on your website or getting a new website with online video, Mercury can handle your entire project. Go to the Our Work section of this website to see samples of Mercury developed website projects that contain online video, in particular the Samuel M. Goldstein Productions website, Tech Valley (Sam produced the video tours), Applied Robotics and Albany-Troy Cataracts.