Video In Your Website

Web design and video in Loveland, Fort Collins, and all over the U.S., Canada

When embarking upon a new Web design project as part of an Internet marketing campaign, one important consideration is whether or not the website design project will include video, and if so, what kind?

The only drawback to including video for the Web in your Web design project is the cost.

• Added visual appeal
• Increased visitor session length
• Enables you to communicate emotional ideas
• Gives users control of their experience on your website
• Video is versatile and reusable

If you're ready to talk about video for your website, contact me today. Otherwise, read on…

Added Visual Appeal

Not every website has video on it yet. It's likely that not all of your competitors have it. Ideally, you will be the first in your market to have it on your site, but even if you're not the first, video on your site will impress the visitors that come to your website, and will help keep your website competitive with the other dentists, plastic surgeons, etc in your area.

Internet users these days can be somewhat lazy, so if you take the time to communicate with them visually and spoon-feed them the information that you want them to have, they will be much more receptive. For this reason, video can increase your session length.

Increased Session Length

Obviously, videos take time to watch. The average user is willing to spend more time watching your video content than reading your text content. It doesn't mean that you should build your website based 100% upon video for a couple reasons. For one, the search engines aren't quite able to index video, so if you don't have text in your website to offer to search engines, your website won't show up, and your videos won't get watched. Second, not everyone wants to watch a video. You need have easy-to-read content for visitors to read.

Communicate Emotional Ideas

Reading a patient testimonial on a dental Web design is not the same as hearing a patient give it themselves on camera. It's not just the words. It's the patient's voice and facial expressions. Videos also tend to have music than can be emotionally moving. As a dentist or plastic surgeon or whatever, you can give a first-hand account of why you're passionate about what you do.

Empower Your Visitors

You've heard of video "on demand". You can give visitors an added element of control over their experience on your website by allowing them to play (or not) your videos as they see fit.

Versatility

You can do a video on just about any subject within your practice. If you have a plastic surgery Web design, you could feasibly do a video about each of the procedures that you offer. Video that is produced for your website can and should be reused elsewhere. Each of those procedural videos can be posted to YouTube and optimized to drive traffic back to your website. You can also use the videos in your follow-up with patients/customers. If you have someone call or email you about a particular service or product, you can send them to the corresponding page of your website to view the video. You can also use the YouTube embed code to embed the video in your blog when you have posts that relate to the video. You should even consider using your videos in your waiting room or in DVDs that you might give to patients in informational welcome packets.

Kinds of Video

Video falls into two categories: professional and amateur. Your website should ideally have both kinds of video. Professional videographers provide a higher quality end product that will give your website a very polished look. The footage is shot at a high resolution, and can be edited together to cut out mistakes. Your good takes can be edited together and intercut with other people's segments. Professional videos may also contain music and graphics.

Professional videos can also be "borderless". Borderless videos are those videos where a person appears on the screen and talks directly to the visitor. They might step out from the side of the screen or fade in, but the gimmick is that they appear to be standing right in front of the website. Borderless videos aren't for everyone. They can come across as salesy, but they are eye catching.

Amateur videos have their own merits, not the least of which is the cost. You can pick up a decent video camera for a couple hundred dollars. Of course, the more you spend on a camera, the higher quality the image and audio will be. In addition to being cheap, it's also incredibly easy to shoot a do-it-yourself video. Just figure out what you're going to say and hit record. Don't worry about getting it perfect. Thanks to YouTube, people expect that videos aren't always going to be as high in quality as a professional video. This is actually a strength of amateur video. It comes across as more authentic. Do it in one take. Be animated and be yourself. One tip: invest in a tri-pod so that your videos aren't shaky, and make sure that you're close enough to the camera that your voice sounds okay.

Interested in how you can use videos to your advantage on your website? Call or email me today and we can talk about the costs involved and how you can get started.