That Clickable Little Sideways Triangle
- SHARE ON:
We are obsessed with clicking play, and it’s that little sideways triangle that makes us do it. The play button has been extremely well integrated into our everyday lives, and when we’re online we just can’t help but click on it to bring that mysterious thumbnail to life and enjoy a blissful period of passive entertainment. Like turning on the TV at home when we’re bored, we click the play button on the Internet to be immersed in multimedia – taking our minds away or engaging them in educational information. We love it, and we’re doing it more often, with YouTube video views at a whopping 4 billion views per month. We’re being conditioned to click play, and this is why every company needs a video.
When it comes to a corporate website, chances are that visitors are there to find out more information – and they definitely don’t like to be kept waiting. Rather than waffling through the “About Us” tab or the “What We Do” page, web users are expecting the basic premise of a company’s offering to be presented with the absolute minimum clicks. If they don’t get it, they’re going to leave – and fast. Having a video on a landing page of a website increases engagement with that website up to 5 minutes and 50 seconds (up from just 43 seconds with a text and image-based website). Better yet, we had better not forget that Google in fact owns YouTube, and having a video on your landing page will significantly increase the ranking of search results for your product or service.
As the old adage goes, a picture tells a thousand words. If that logic holds, then a one-minute video at 25 frames per second tells 1.5 million words – a compelling argument for video, some might say. Video engages two of our senses, sight and sound, meaning that we are much more likely to retain information in videos rather than listening to audio or reading text.
It’s really a no-brainer, and here are the first steps on your video journey:
- Look at your homepage. No video? Get one.
- Look at your homepage. Got video? Great! Now make it stand out, and dont neglect that play button.
- Where else can you put video? Job openings, customer testimonial, case study, CEO message (only if they’re camera ready), the list goes on.
- Check your video host (e.g. YouTube). Are you videos tagged correctly for SEO?
- Check your content. What are you saying, and who are you saying it to?
