Video storytelling is one of the best ways to make your marketing better. Video is more engaging, easier to remember, and drives customer behavior more effectively than text alone. Because it’s potent and highly sought after, you don’t need a lot of video to make a big difference.
You simply need to know the best places to use it in your strategy.
Gone are the days when you needed a “long-form” presentation of five minutes or even ten minutes to capture users’ attention with video. A clip that’s just 15 seconds long can have powerful and measurable effects on your audience – as long as the content presented moves their goals forward.
Video, Once a “Nice to Have,” Is Now a Core Part of Marketing Strategy
Even though video content is popular, it wasn’t always easy to come by. Outside of dedicated video websites like YouTube, website designers have traditionally gone light on video clips. There was always a concern that customers wouldn’t have the connection speed or data availability to enjoy “unexpected” video.
Over the last few years, that concern has disappeared. Video is becoming an integral part of website design because most customers are ready and eager to encounter it in a growing number of places. Unlimited data plans are more common and smartphones are increasingly used for product research.
Odds are good that at least some of your customers use their smartphones as their main source of online connectivity, and mobile devices are made with video content in mind. So, it only makes sense that a forward-thinking brand should deploy video in the foundations of its website design.
But there is still such a thing as too much of a good thing.
If you end up with dozens of hours of video content spread throughout your website, you could dilute your message (or at the very least your visitors’ attention spans) and it will be harder to guide them through the customer journey. You should embrace video, but every video should have a purpose.
After all, most small and mid-sized businesses have a limit to how much video they can publish. Hiring a marketing agency raises the bar on both production and quality, but you still need to decide which videos should be completed first and which should wait. That suggests it’s still vital to be strategic about video.
Here’s how.
The Three Best Ways to Enhance Your Website Design with Video
Time and again, business owners are surprised at just how useful video is in helping them reach marketing goals. Video is the next best thing to being there, a way of establishing a human connection before you’ve actually met in person. Using it directly within your website design is a natural step.
Here are the three best ways to improve your website design with video:
Header Video Loops to Anchor Your Website Design
What’s the first thing someone sees when they arrive on your website’s home page? If the answer is something like “a menu,” you’re missing out on a terrific opportunity. The human brain is wired to respond to faces, and it lights up whenever eye contact is made. A header video adds that interpersonal energy to your website design.
A photo or video with a character who stands in for the viewer is known in marketing as a hero shot. The character is usually in action, demonstrating the benefits of engaging with your products or service – or simply exuding the kind of energy you want associated with your brand.
Until recently, it was common to implement hero images as static photos on a rotating image carousel. The image would change every few seconds and users could scroll backwards or forward to other images. Video helps the hero image hold attention while tying together the other elements on the page.
Hero images are at their best when they’re emotionally engaging, bridging your brand and the type of lifestyle it represents. Your hero video might be as brief as fifteen seconds, but it can have just as much impact as a full-length commercial – all without alienating visitors by delaying the task at hand.
FAQ Videos Make a Website Design More Dynamic
In the world of website design, there’s an ongoing debate about the best way to convey the information in your Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). While the concept of the FAQ has been around since long before the highly interactive websites we have today, the execution is undergoing a transformation.
On one side of the story are those who feel AI-driven chatbots are the way of the future. These are especially effective in e-commerce because they can tie into the entire database of products and access user sales history. Asking questions to a chatbot in natural language might even feel like talking to a person – at least for a while.
On the other side are those who prefer video.
While AI might “feel like” a person for a few minutes, it eventually dawns on the average user that it’s really a strategy for avoiding other people. To get away from AI and reach a real representative, you might have to click through half a dozen menus. On the other hand, video is all about the human touch.
FAQ videos can be brief and to the point, so even dozens of questions might get answered in less than an hour. At the same time, they get the insight they need users also learn about the real people behind your enterprise.
Testimonial Videos Add Social Proof with More Flair
Customers want to know that others “just like them” have achieved success using your product or service. Social proof is any kind of marketing that emphasizes that social connection. Testimonials and reviews are among the best social proof you can have. Video makes them even better.
Although people are becoming more wary of online reviews, it’s still true that many customers regard them with nearly as much trust as a personal recommendation from someone they know. Testimonials boost this effect to the next level because a website visitor has the chance to relate to the person giving the testimonial.
Testimonial videos can be embedded in multiple places throughout your website design depending on where they would be most effective. For instance, they can break up information on blog posts, spice up the website footer, or appear in the shopping cart to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
That said, it’s important your website videos provide the best possible user experience in context. Auto-playing videos is not always appropriate and might annoy some users. A mobile-responsive website can have aspects that vary between its desktop and smartphone versions, so you can be extra precise about video placement.
Video has the power to differentiate your website so it stands out from the crowd. New York Ave not only plans, writes, and produces videos, but ensures you get the most value from them. Contact us to discover more or get started with modern website design.
