How can you improve your website's user experience with video?

Since Google uses user experience as a primary factor to rank websites and videos have become the best way to engage with your audience, adding quality and relevant videos to your website improves user experience and rankings. But maintaining a good loading time is very important for a fast-loading website which is an important factor when it comes to UX. This is where choosing the right video format and length comes into play. The format and length should be right to allow integration and to keep the audience interested. Striking this balance helps us to improve our website's user experience, improve our SEO rankings, deliver the right marketing message, and make them take action fast while enjoying the time they spend on the website.

Add subtitles and transcripts to your videos. This not only makes your content accessible to a wider audience, including those with hearing impairments, but also caters to viewers who prefer to watch videos without sound, like mobile users in public places.

Incorporating short and relevant videos on your website can enhance the user experience. For instance, use explanatory videos to showcase products or services, delivering information in a visually appealing manner. You can also include video testimonials to boost user confidence, presenting authentic and compelling real-life experiences with your brand.

Where you host your videos is as important as choosing the right length and format. If your goal is to have a video rank in the top search results for a specific question about your field, you should post that video to YouTube and practice good SEO tactics to ensure Google serves it up as a top answer. If you want to have a series of quick tip videos permeate search results, short-form vertical videos on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts should be your focus. If you want accredited and authentic product demos and case studies, for the bottom of your funnel with minimal to no distracting factors Wistia or Vimeo may be the best way to host your videos on-site most professionally.

When someone is on your website, a still image can only go so far. A video that lets you experience a product or learn about a service can communicate far better than a written piece ever could. The key is remembering your target audience and what they need to see. What's in it for them? If you're a marketing consultant, a welcome video on your homepage or showcasing your public speaking events generates trust. If you sell shoes, a video showing someone wearing a pair accessorized with an outfit helps sell a fuller picture better than even a 360 degree view of the product. It's all about connecting and feeling (as much as you can through a screen) and video is the way to do it. Don't forget, cut the fluff and get to the point.

Regularly monitor and analyze engagement metrics for your videos. Tools like Google Analytics can provide insights into how long viewers watch your videos, at what point they stop watching, and how they interact with the video content.

Optimizing your website's video content is always giving you additional support to rank your website on search engines. This is how you can optimize your videos for SEO: First, it's important to identify relevant keywords related to your video content and incorporate these keywords naturally into the video title, description, and tags. Having a compelling thumbnail is also a huge advantage because 26% of search results on Google are videos and having a great thumbnail will make a "rich snippet" on your content and increase CTR. Apart from that you can consider steps like implementing a compelling video description, adding transcripts, optimizing video filename, and optimizing the videos for mobile devices.

The metadata of your video is the best way to optimize it for SEO. Make sure you have captions attached to it, enable a transcript, and ensure your alt text and description even your file name are all specific and targeted towards your desired search results. Compelling thumbnails and chapters are also far more likely to be served up by Google in search results.

Add interactive elements to your videos, such as clickable links, quizzes, or branching scenarios. Interactive videos can significantly boost engagement by transforming passive viewing into an active experience.

An effective approach to improving the user experience with video is the targeted use of captions and transcripts to increase not only accessibility but also the depth of content. Rather than just seeing it as an accessibility option, we should see it as an integral part of the content strategy. By offering subtitles in different languages, you can reach a wider, international audience. This can be particularly beneficial for a company like OMR Education, which specialises in online marketing and digital, as it increases global reach and influence. Transcripts can also be used as standalone content. They provide an opportunity to include more in-depth information and additional resources that may not be fully covered in the video itself.

Rumor has it Google ranks search results with video higher than without. This implies Google puts a video thumbnail next to a search result, as it does for 26% of search results, users are more likely to click that listing. A result that has a thumbnail is a “rich snippet”, and such snippets attract more clicks than traditional snippets.

Track everything. Likes, Shares, Comments and view time/view percentage are great indicators of engagement and how well your content is connecting with your target audience. Heat maps of viewership and watching where viewers drop off is a great way to inform future content creation decisions and optimize your existing videos, if everyone drops off when you talk about XYZ topic, skip that detail in the next video or consider cutting it out of this asset. Optimize your thumbnails by tracking click-through rates and play rates and A/B/C testing thumbnail design. Just be sure to prioritize your metrics according to the underlying marketing goal.

A couple of points: 1. Use short and concise videos, now there is too much information on the Internet, you need to give a specific and quick answer. 2. Thumbnails is number 1 for grabbing first attention. 3. The point follows from the previous one - don't deceive the user’s expectations! 4. A short introduction, without any lol pitches, not according to the premise of the video. 5. Always think about the benefits for the consumer!

I regularly speak to business owners who fail to recognize the value of embedding video into their websites. They invest $1000s in keyword SEO strategy but miss the second largest search engine and social media platform on the planet, YouTube. Creating a video content SEO strategy kills two birds with one stone, it's like double dipping on search results. The key is to make sure the video content aligns with the video content, subtitles and transcripts should also be provided with the target keywords as well, as these provide opportunities to leverage search too. It also allows you to double dip into analytics, not only do you get google search console and analytics data you get YouTube analytics as well. Don't neglect audio only too.