5 Reasons a Website with Video is a Website with Power

Does your company’s website have a video on it? It doesn’t matter if it’s on your home page, a product or services page, or a single blog post. Even if you have a single fifteen second video, your website is more powerful than most of the others out there.

If there aren’t any videos on your website, you’re going to need to change that.

Don’t believe me? Maybe these numbers will convince you:

• 90% of users say that watching a product video helps them make a decision about the product (source)
• According to Forrester research, the value of one minute of video is 1.8 million words (source)
• According to Outbrain, 87% of online marketers are already using video (source)

But if you need more than numbers, here are 5 reasons you should have video content on your website:

1. You can convey more information in less time

Like we cited above, there’s data that suggests one minute of video is equal to almost two million words. That’s a lot of information that can be consumed really easily. Consider how much information your target market typically needs before making a purchasing decision. Let’s say it’s a few thousand words. Would you rather take several hours to write out, revise, and edit that information, or spend an hour writing an outline of a video, whipping out the camera on your phone, and recording it?

Video also presents the information in a different way. When you’re thinking about buying a new product, you don’t want to have someone tell you how it works. Nope. You want to see for yourself how it can work.

But even if you’re not a product-based business, or are using video for a different purpose than demoing products, using video will still present your information in a way more easily processed by your website visitors.

2. Having video content can increase time spent on your site

While exact numbers and percentages differ from study to study, countless studies have found that having video content increases the amount of time visitors spend on your website, and frequently reduces bounce rate.

It makes sense. Most pages people visit on the web are mostly words, with some pictures thrown in there too. When someone’s browsing and finds something different from the past 20 websites they visited, they’re going to be more interested. Video can also pull someone in more easily than paragraphs, making it longer before they’re bored enough to navigate away from the page.

3. People love to share videos

Take five minutes to look through your feeds on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and any other social network your active on. Did you find a video post? I’ll bet you did. Because people love to share videos on social media.

Whether they’re sharing a link to the page with your video on it, or sharing the video directly so that it can be watched on the social network, you’re still getting views on your content. That’s a whole other audience learning about your business.

4. Uploading video to third-party sites will increase your content’s reach

A lot of people don’t like the idea of uploading their company’s video to a third-party site and then embedding it on their website for aesthetic or technical reasons. But there are definite advantages to hosting your videos on a site like YouTube or Vimeo.

Think about it. YouTube is the second largest search-engine, and it’s owned by the first largest, Google. Google also shows thumbnail previews of videos from these sites in search results, drawing more attention to the listing.

Video sites like YouTube and Vimeo also have their own audiences. Someone who’s never heard of you, and would never go to your site for that reason, could stumble upon your video on a video site and ultimately end up on your website. The extended reach isn’t something to write off.

5. They’re entertaining

A video is frequently more interesting and entertaining than an essay or picture trying to convey the same information. It’s as simple as that.

How do you use video in your content strategy? Comment below on how it helps your website!