Best length for a video on a website
-
Most of us deal with UI/UX questions and SEO questions from clients on a daily basis. I was discussing video length with a client recently and I realized that he was in his video. This made me think about the thrill of seeing yourself in video might cause someone to make their video longer at the expense of UX. So, I thought I would put it to the Moz community. If a company is doing a "typical" home page "Explainer" video that tells about a company. This can be in the B2B or B2C sectors. I want to withhold my opinion at this point for the discussion.
-
When I worked in the newspaper industry and they started to use video, we were always told to keep it to under a minute and a half - I think if you go beyond that then people lose interest. Even so, if you go to the full time it has to be interesting throughout. The shorter the better really and don't do it for the sake of it - it has to add something for the viewer.
-
The answer to this would have to be "it depends" but in general my opinion would be a home page explainer should be 30-60 seconds.
But this is a clear situation where opinions or personal preferences are useless - let the data tell you what the visitors demand. This question screams for split testing - or at the very least doing close Analytics tracking via events to know how many even start the video, how long they watch, and whether they watch to the end.
Just showing the client that - say - fewer than 20% watch the video past 30 seconds would settle the discussion pretty quickly.
My $0.02
Paul
-
I appreciate this and that you added two to three minutes. I was trying to avoid detail for fear of contaminating people's opinions. My discussion came up with a service business that wanted what we call an explainer video. In other words: this is the problem, this is the solution, and this is why we are the choice.
Typically, I do not like these to run beyond 90 seconds and feel like anything closer to 60 seconds is better. The one for this client is animated, but we have another client who does videos and "stars" in them. They tend to be longer and, in agreement with your first point, I think they lose people.Thanks again, EGOL,
Robert
-
Even the tiny businesses that I run have a diversity of clients and types of clients. Far too many to summarize well in one short video. I believe that the message should be customized different types of clients.
If I was making videos they would be one click below the homepage. There I would post very short videos that simply present the product range, the value propositions that we offer our clients, and the support that we provide to help clients be successful. What we do for YOU.
Each business service or major product category would have one of these videos.
Instead of showing the CEO's face in these videos, I think it would be better to feature the staff members who will do the actual work and interface with the clients. Show staff in the work areas and offices where client work is accomplished. The goal is to show the experts who offer their skills and services and the assets that we have to accomplish the work.
How long? Two or three minutes.
I think it would be better to cover a limited range of information. That way the video is relevant to the listener's interests and not go into services that are not what the visitor has clicked into.
-
+1
This remind me when i talking about websites with some movie director. His idea was "all sites should have something cover page, when you visit it for first time you should see it. Even see this page every time on your visits as initial.". I was WTF?
-
I agree, this is excellent. So, assuming that it is about their services how long are you willing to endure? Obviously, if they are not getting to a point, etc. you are going to leave before it ends no matter what. My interest in this is in trying to get clients to understand what works vs. what looks good to them.
Do you look at video length when you begin to watch it or before you hit play? Does a certain length make you less likely to go forward?Thanks as always EGOL,
Robert
-
"typical" home page "Explainer" video that tells about a company.
I'd rather see explainer videos about products and services. Information that I want and need.
An explainer video "about a company".... sounds kinda sleepy.... I go to Wikipedia for that type of info because C-level company people are going to be thumpin' their chests and I'd rather read just the facts, presented with lots of subheadings so I can jump over what I don't need to know.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
When sub domains take away the traffic from search; will this helps or hurts main website rankings?
Hi all, We have some of the landing pages on our sub domains which are getting ranked for our brand related queries and taking away the traffic as we don't have pages to rank for those search queries. I would like to know if this scenario hurts or helps our main website ranking as the traffic to the main website is getting diverted to sub domain. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
When Google is going to penalise webpages with autoplaying videos?
Hi, One of the most disgusting experiences while browsing web pages is the auto playing anonymous and highly non relevant ad videos at some corner of the page which buffer mostly and automatically plays. There are familiar websites which been following this activity. I don't think Google has ever rolled out an update to penalise these. Any idea why? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Is Having Content 'Above The Fold' Still Relevant for Website Design and SEO
Hey there, So I have a client who recently 're-skinned' their website and now there is little to no content above the fold. Likewise, I've noticed that since the transition to this new front-end design there has been a drop in rankings for a number of keywords related to one of the topics we are targeting. Is there any correlation here? Is having content 'above the fold' still a relevant factor in determining a websites' searchability? I appreciate you reading and look forward to hearing from all of you. Have a great day!
Algorithm Updates | | maxcarnage0 -
SEO for International Expansion - Best Strategies
Looking for some Best Strategies in SEO for International Expansion . We were based in a single country till one year back and then decided to expand to other English speaking countries as well. Traffic from SEO for us is around 1.3 million users only from the single country and we rank in top#3 for 90% of our targeted keyword bank of 45000+ keywords. We just launched in some new countries like singapore , philippines and few other English speaking countries with really unique content and I wanted to check whether I can use my mother domain or use any other strategies for growing SEO faster in other countries. Any inputs on scaling up SEO traffic internationally will be appreciated
Algorithm Updates | | ozil1 -
Should you include Website Title in all page title tags?
We recently spent analyzing some of the best SEO software companies on the U.S. market fishing for the best practices in SEO and I saw one thing in common : They all had website titles in all the page title tags separated by " | " Is that the best practice for SEO or is it just for Branding? Interestingly enough, the website titles were completely unrelated to the pages' content or keywords. (Here's my personal opinion on what it looked like: "riding on a bicycle" | Ferrari ) But when I looked up the keywords ... ranked #1 or #2 spots, in some serious competition. (So in the example above, "bicycle" would be in the top spot)
Algorithm Updates | | HMCOE0 -
Since authorship markup requires a domain email, how can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile?
It seems that Google now requires authors to have a valid email on the domain. This is easy for the traditional web publication. But what about community websites like SEOmoz? How can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile? Will community websites like SEOmoz be required to 1. Give all users a domain email 2. Ask users to validate the email address with Google? Seems overly complicated.
Algorithm Updates | | designquotes0 -
Why bing is not indexing our website?
We are up almost a six month already, google indexed 46,900 pages. We have decent traffic and a lot of real external links to us. No single page has been indexed by bing or yahoo. I have submitted sitemap to bing's webmaster tool two weeks ago and still it is in Pending stage. here is our address: www.showme.com and here is site map: http://www.showme.com/sitemapxml.php What can be the reason of that? Thanks for your help. Karen Bdoyan
Algorithm Updates | | showme0 -
What are the first ten steps you should do with a new website
First of all i would like to say how amazing this forum is, i have learnt a lot with all the great help. I am launching a new site mainly to allow me to learn seo and to understand what is involved in building a new site and get it to the search engines. the site is here which i have started today which is a lifestyle magazine is http://www.womenlifestylemagazine.com/ What i am trying to understand is, what are the first most important steps when trying to get google and traffic to your site. the site will be complete in the next week or so but in the meantime i want to use this site to learn more about seo and how you get the site discovered by visitors and search engines and the time scale behind it. I am hoping that other people who are new to seo and are building a new site will be able to use this post to learn about what is involved and learn like me. Would be great to hear from people who have started their own site so we can all understand what are the important steps to make and which things we should do in which order. thank you everyone
Algorithm Updates | | ClaireH-1848860