A picture is worth 1,000 words, but what about a video? According to one study, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words.1 Can you imagine taking the time to write that many words on your website? That’s the equivalent of 3,600 web pages! Video is so powerful because it integrates the three building blocks of art: visual, aural, and conceptual. While web design is just visual, music is only aural, and text is purely conceptual, video is all three. With video, you can express more in a shorter period of time. This makes videos an incredibly economical means to grow your business. Adding one video to your website is worth a great deal more than one 500-word blog post – although we love those too.
Videos are valuable, not just because it has the power to convey more meaning than text or web design. In addition, videos on your website also improve:
- Visitor Experience
- Brand Perception
- Search Engine Optimization
- Understanding of a Concept or Action
So let’s dig into each of these shall we?
1. Videos Enhance Visitor Experience
People have the attention spans of goldfish when reading text online. Users would much rather watch a video and have all the information they need in a condensed version than read a page of text. Moreover, one study found that people spent a significantly longer time on pages that included video content than those that did not. On average, people spent 5 minutes 29 seconds on a page that had a video, compared to 4 minutes 46 on pages that did not have a video.1 That’s nearly an extra minute spent on the page!
In addition, a video adds something special to a web page. It breaks up static text and images, and offers an alternative form of communication with a user. It also encourages the visitor to stay on the page longer to watch.
2. Videos Improve the Perception of Your Brand
People love to see that companies are real people. By watching a video you created, the viewer starts to develop an emotional connection to you, and it can feel as if they actually met you in person. Through body language, eye contact, appearance, and tone of voice, you can express a great deal more information about yourself and your brand than a web page ever could. All of this helps build trust, connection, and that emotional bond. When someone starts to feel these things towards your company he/she is more likely to see you as real people, not just a corporation that wants their money.
Moreover, adding a high-quality video to your website asserts professionalism. It shows you have the time, money, and talent to create it, and chances are high that will improve your brand’s perception.
3. Videos Improve Search Engine Optimization
After Google, YouTube is the largest search engine. Developing a presence on YouTube means you give people another place to find you online. You develop this presence by creating a YouTube channel and uploading videos to it, and you can use ones that have already been featured on your website. A YouTube presence can drive traffic to your site, and increase brand awareness, referrals, and sales.
For example, let’s say your company sells ties online and you created a video for your website demonstrating ‘how to tie a tie’. If you upload this to your YouTube channel, someone could now come to YouTube to find out ‘how to tie a tie’ and if your company video pops up they may be inclined to visit your site after watching it.
On top of that, as you start to develop a presence on YouTube your videos will begin to rank on Google Search Result Pages. In Google search engine results pages, thumbnail images of YouTube videos sometimes appear next to results. This makes your link stand out to searchers, and is often incentivizes people to click on it.
In addition, video can be a conversion driver. A website visitor is 64% more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video. [1] Videos increase trust and user engagement, making them to be more willing to whip out their wallet.
Lastly, links continue to be an important metric with which search engines measure how reliable a piece of content is – see our blog posts Lessons in Link Building Part 1 and Part 2 if you need a refresher in link building. People are far more likely to share video than they are to share text, because they’re just more interesting. Anytime your video is shared means more inbound links for you, which improves your SEO.
4. Videos Enhance Understanding
A video can also show a visitor how to do something, or explain a complex subject. For instance, videos can help a customer understand how a product works or how to do something at home. Not only that, but some information is best described in video form. For example, the Will It Blend campaign just wouldn’t be as interesting if it was simply text and pictures describing the action.
Adding a video to your website is an extremely powerful online marketing tool. A video can convey your message more quickly and effectively than any landing page text or blog post ever could, improving the user experience. Moreover, people love to see the real side of your company in a video. Body language, tone of voice, and eye contact can all enhance an emotional bond with the viewer. Additionally, videos improve your SEO on multiple levels. Lastly, videos can be the best way to explain or demonstrate certain aspects of your product. If you have the time, resources, and creativity to create a video for your website, we highly recommend that you do so.
1. Follet, Andrew. Video Brewery. April 2013. Retrieved May 8, 2013. (http://www.videobrewery.com/blog/18-video-marketing-statistics).