How to Use Online Video to Improve Your User Engagement Metrics

Almost half of all internet users watch an hour of online video every week. Video content is increasingly important, and is becoming harder to ignore if you’re looking to engage your users. However, because of the time it takes to produce a quality video, you need to ensure that the results live up to their potential.

Fortunately, the extra effort this requires will be well spent. Using videos on your site can increase user engagement, and help push visitors through your conversion funnel so you can make more sales. Excellent video content can also ensure that visitors stick around on your site longer.

In this article, we’ll look at the benefits of using videos on your site, and discuss how you can use them to implement a Call To Action (CTA). We’ll also show you how our Popup Maker Videos extension can be used to improve user engagement with your online video content. Let’s take a look!

Why Video Content Is Becoming Increasingly Vital Online

Due to the popularization of online video, and the rise of sites like YouTube, video content has become a central aspect of everyday internet existence. In 2017, video constituted 74% of all online traffic, and over half of all internet users watch at least one video online every day.

This was not the case even a few years ago. The proliferation of high-speed internet, along with the increase in internet usage on mobile devices, has led to a boom for video. It also helps that the software and hardware required to produce quality video content is now a lot easier to afford and use by non-professionals.

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All signs point to online video becoming even more ubiquitous in the future. This is good news for you, as it means you can start using video content now to engage visitors on your site. Videos can also be used to supplement your text content, or in some cases even replace it with something more compelling and shareable.

In fact, implementing video content might soon be a necessity, as the demand for videos continues to grow. Even today, half of all internet users will look for videos related to a product before they consider buying it. A majority of users also prefer to watch a product video rather than read about it. These numbers make it clear that it’s time to consider how you can implement online video effectively.

Tips for Optimizing Your Online Video Content

In order to create videos that appeal to your users, you need to be aware of what will make them actually watch your content. It’s crucial that you catch their attention within the first 10 seconds of your video, and videos under a minute long tend to be most successful. 80% of users finish a video shorter than 60 seconds, while only 50% are likely to make it to the end of a 10-minute video.

How long your videos need to be depends on their purpose, but these are important benchmarks to consider. For example, product videos rarely need to be longer than a minute. Even videos that provide educational content, such as tutorials, should be kept as short and concise as possible.

Regardless of your videos’ content, it’s very important to include a Call To Action (CTA). In other words, you want to give viewers something they can take immediate action on. This could be buying a product, or simply watching another video. We’ve discussed why CTAs are important before, and videos are no exception. Once your video has caught the user’s attention, you have a perfect opportunity to prompt them to take a desired action. Fortunately, it isn’t difficult to include CTAs within the video itself.

If you’re part of the YouTube Partner Program, you can also use its end cards to steer viewers towards other videos and external links. Even if your videos are stored on YouTube, however, you should also consider embedding them directly on your website. This will keep users on your site longer. Plus, it gives you total control over how people experience your videos.

How to Use Online Video Content Effectively on Your Website

One way you can implement videos on your site is by creating a popup video player. You can do this using the Videos extension of Popup Maker, which enables you to create a customizable video popup box.

Let’s take a quick look at one way you could do this. For this example, let’s say you want to add product videos to an online store. This might mean creating a video popup that triggers when users click on a product’s thumbnail image.

To get started, you’ll want to install both Popup Maker and the Videos extension. Then, navigate to Popup Maker > Add Popup. Give your new popup a name, and enter the video’s URL into the content field. Once you’ve pasted in the link, it will automatically convert into an embedded video:

After that, scroll down to the Popup Settings and create a new trigger. You’ll want to set this to Click Open. You should not create a cookie, as this will prevent the user from viewing the video more than once. Instead, leave the default options selected, and click on Add:

You can now scroll down further to the Video Settings, where you can configure the video player. It makes sense for a product video to rewind when the popup is re-opened, so you may want to select that option. You can also set the video to start playing automatically, and decide whether the popup should close when the video ends:

Your popup is now successfully configured, so publish it and select Popup Maker > All Popups to return to the list of popups. All you need to do here is take a note of the CSS Classes next to the new popup. In the following example, you can see that the classes are popmake-12 and popmake-video:

You can add these CSS classes onto any page element, to make it a clickable link that will open your popup. This works just as well on images as on selections of text:

If you add a thumbnail image to a post or page and apply the CSS classes to it, you can see how the popup works in action:

Your video popup is now working! Of course, you can further customize the video player’s appearance if you like.

Before we wrap up, let’s talk about how to track the performance of your online video. You can do this easily with the Popup Analytics extension. This is an especially invaluable tool when it comes to video popups. This is because it lets you see exactly how much time users spend watching your videos. After installing the extension, you can find this information in the Analytics & Stats section when editing a popup:

This data will help you optimize your videos, giving you insight into their ideal length, and when the best time is to incorporate your CTA. By paying attention to how your users engage with your videos, you can provide the best value possible, and your CTAs will become more effective!

Conclusion

Video content has become so commonplace online that it’s foolish to ignore its importance. While creating videos may seem like a lot of work, it also offers you plenty of creative possibilities. By using videos on your website, you can improve user engagement and even increase conversion rates.

In this article, we’ve looked at how you can use online video to engage with your users. You can optimize your video content by keeping it concise and offering clear CTAs. Then, you can use the Videos extension of Popup Maker to create a customized video player on your site, and track your videos’ performance using the Popup Analytics extension.

Do you have any questions about using videos to engage with your website visitors? Let us know in the comments section below!

Image credit: Pixabay.