Best Practices for Using Video on Your Homepage

In a previous post we covered the numerous advantages of using video on a homepage, and briefly touched on how you can use it. In this post we’ll explain in more detail how you should be using video on your homepage, so we’ve put together some useful tips to help you use it to its full potential.

Think About the Placement

The homepage is what gives visitors a first impression of not only the website, but your business as a whole. You only have a short period of time to catch a visitor’s attention, so you need to deliver your message quickly, and make it easy to find.

Placing a video further down your page isn’t going to do much good at all, whereas placing it at the top is far more effective. This will mean that people won’t have to scroll to find what they’re looking for, and your video might be the one thing that catches their eye and keeps them on your website.

Be Careful When Using Auto-play

9 times out of 10, auto-playing videos don’t work. They can be annoying, intrusive and distracting, which can easily put visitors off. If you plan to use an auto-playing video you should make sure that it is silent, unless the user clicks a button that activates sound.

Here’s the homepage video from Toggl, which is a perfect example of how auto-playing videos can be done right.

Give it a Good Title

Your title should summarise in a few words what the video is about. If you’re struggling to think of the perfect title, look at it from a viewer’s perspective and think about what would interest you.

You don’t always need to have a title; instead you could use a custom video thumbnail with text. The downside is that you don’t get the SEO benefit that comes with using a text title, but on the positive side you get something visual that stands out and urges people to click.

Think Outside the Box

YouTube is pretty much the go-to platform when you want to upload and host a video, but in fact there are many better options available. We have recently published a post about alternative video hosting methods which you can check out here to find out more.

You don’t just have to use one platform and stick with it, you could experiment with several and see which works most effectively based on your analytics.

Keep it Short

We have said this many times before, but your homepage video should be no longer than 90 seconds. If it is longer, people are going to drop off due to boredom or if they’re in a rush. If your video is too long, you can cut out the less significant parts or speed up the video to shave a few more seconds off.

Is the Video Player Big Enough?

You should avoid making your video smaller, unless it has really has to be. A video is something to embrace, so you should make it big and bold so people can see it. Using the default YouTube player is fine, but if you want to make it bigger then you can easily adjust the numbers in the embed code.

Promote it

This goes without saying, but we’re going to say it anyway because so many companies have a video but don’t go through the effort of sharing or promoting it. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money is promotion, you can simply share it on social media as it is one of the most effective and accessible digital marketing tools today.

About the author

Dan Cliff

Dan (aka Cliff) is a Digital Marketing Assistant and social media enthusiast, involved in blogging, producing marketing videos and general office tomfoolery. If you would like to contribute to the Eden Videos blog, Dan is the man to contact.