Video Voodoo
Submitted by Green Giant on Wed, 05/30/2007 - 15:13.
I think it's time for me to test video on some of my landing pages. I've got a few questions for everyone here that I'm hoping will help me out:
1. Is it better to host the videos yourself or find a video hosting service to do it for you? Any recommendations for services? I'd rather pay a little and not have any brand logos on my videos if possible.
2. For anyone that has tested video on landing pages, what have you noticed about your visitors' behaviour? Difference in conversion rate? Difference in CTR? Difference in time spent on the page?
3. For this site I'm getting around 5,000 page views per day. How big of a concern is bandwidth going to be?
4. Any other recommendations or comments about setting up video on a site?
Thanks!
Mike
Re: Video Voodoo
Sorry for the delay - I've been buried the last 10 days. Let me see if I can help...
Great question. You can host the videos yourself, but make sure you have enough bandwidth. You don't want to exceed your monthly throughput.
I haven't really used video on landing pages, but mostly on content pages, so I'm not sure I'm fully qualified to answer this one. I can say (and this may sound obvious) that it definitely increases time spent on the site ;)
It really depends on the video file size and how many of the 5,000 visitors you expect to watch it. If it starts playing automatically everyone will see it, but I'm sure a certain percentage will drop off before it ends.
Know your hosts monthly bandwidth caps and overage charges. I've created a lot of videos for QYDJ and I've never exceeded my limits. Most good hosts are increasing bandwidth rates to accommodate video content.
- Try to determine what % of your visitors have broadband access. I know Google Analytics has a report that displays this stat. If 50% of your visitors are known to be on dial-up you may have to make an alternate landing page or smaller video.
- If your clip is under 10 minutes you can host it on YouTube, which will also help the viral promotion of your video.
- Camtasia is your best friend.
- Spend a lot of time finding the ideal combination of quality and file size. This is something I consider with every video I produce.
- If you're recording your voice use mono rather than stereo - you will cut your file size in 1/2.
- Keep the video 100% above the fold on 800x600 resolution.
- Have the video auto-redirect to actionable event/page. This is typically pretty easy to do with Flash, Camtasia and other web video editors.
I'll post more as it comes to mind.
Best,
Jeremy
[/]Video Voodoo
Specifically to the following question I have a thought:
Wouldn't it be beneficial to host your video with something like YouTube, embed on your site, and benefit from having that video indexed in the SERPS preferentially? (I mean, Google's got to paying attention to their own content right?)
If you created a watermark of your site address for the video and had a ending credit with a special deal or your domain you may get some direct type in traffic. If you're directly promoting your site they see it, and if they see an indexed result with your video from YouTube they see it and may visit your site.
Not the highest quality video but it's free to host and stream.
With Google's universal search I can't help but think that this would enhance your organic search placement.
Am I completely loopy on my reasoning here? I'm thinking of doing this myself.
Landing page video
Hello,
All the posts have good comments and ideas. You can get indexed quick with a video. I do videos on my sites and sometimes the same day I'm on page one of google with a youtube video. But this depends on the competition also.
With 5000 page views a day I would make sure you have your details worked out with your host if you go with private hosting.
I would also make sure your video is up to speed in quality as the rest of your site must be to be getting this kind of traffic.
Also when you say landing page, is this as in squeeze page as in selling the product or the click through to the merchant? just wondering..
There is code you can take out at the end of a youtube video to keep the other videos ads from showing at the end.
The good thing about your own hosting is you can redirect with flash at the end which is great for affiliates....
Gary