Website Video: What Businesses Should Film First

Most businesses commissioning their first website video ask for a brand film. It is the most expensive option and usually the least useful one, because it sits on a homepage answering a question that visitors reach much later, if at all.

A better first question is: what is the last thing somebody wonders about before they contact you, and where on the site are they standing when they wonder it. Film that.

If people are choosing a person, film the person

Therapists, lawyers, consultants, accountants, coaches, agents, trades. In all of these the buyer is choosing who to trust, and a written biography is a poor instrument for that. Sixty to ninety seconds of someone speaking gives a visitor tone, pace and manner, which is most of what they are actually assessing.

This is the pattern behind the website video work on this site. One of those clients, a psychotherapist in Toronto, put it plainly in her own words: choosing a therapist based solely on a written bio can feel challenging. Her case study has her full account.

• Put it on the page where the decision happens, which is usually the About or the individual practitioner page, not only the homepage.
• Keep it under ninety seconds. This is not a documentary and length works against it.
• Have them answer the questions clients actually ask, in their own words. No script.
• Do not open with the business name. Open with the thing the viewer is worried about.

If people do not understand what you do, film an explainer

Software, marketplaces, new services, anything where the visitor's first reaction is what is this. A 45 to 90 second explainer above the fold does more work than three paragraphs, because it can show the thing rather than describe it.

• Lead with the problem, not the product. Name the product about a third of the way in.
• Show the thing working. A screen recording of the actual product beats an animation of an idea of it.
• End with one action, and make it the same action as the button next to the video.

If people trust you but hesitate, film a customer

A customer interview is more persuasive than anything you can say about yourself, and it is cheap to produce alongside another shoot. One customer explaining what they were worried about before buying, and what actually happened, is worth more than five one-line quotations on a wall.

What to film second

1. A short service explainer for your highest-value service, on that service's page.
2. A recruitment video, if hiring is a real constraint on the business. This is usually undervalued and it is the video people watch most carefully.
3. A silent background loop for the hero section, but only if there is genuine footage of the work. A stock loop reads as stock.
4. The brand film, once there is something to say that the shorter pieces have not already said.

Publishing it so it does not slow the page down

A website video that hurts page speed loses more than it gains. Four things fix most of it.

• Use a poster image and reserve the space. The poster occupies the video's exact dimensions from first paint, so nothing shifts when the player loads. This is the single biggest cause of layout shift on pages with video.
• Do not load the player until it is wanted. Show the poster with a play control, and load the embed on click. The page then costs a single image rather than a player and its scripts.
• Compress for the web. A 400 MB export belongs in an archive, not on a webpage. Ask your videographer for a web-delivery file alongside the master.
• Host it somewhere built for it. YouTube or Vimeo keeps the file off your server and handles the bandwidth. A self-hosted MP4 is fine for a short muted loop and poor for anything longer.

Accessibility, and the sound question

• Caption everything. A large share of website video is watched with the sound off, and captions are also part of meeting WCAG requirements.
• Never autoplay with sound. If a loop autoplays it must be muted, must carry no information the page does not also state in text, and should respect a visitor's reduced-motion setting.
• Keep the controls reachable by keyboard, and make sure the play control has a real label rather than an icon alone.
• Do not put important copy only in the video. Search engines and people who cannot watch it both need it in text on the page.

What video will and will not do

Video makes a service easier to understand and a person easier to trust, and both of those tend to help conversion. It is not a ranking guarantee. Anybody who offers you a specific percentage lift before filming has made the number up.

If you want a straight recommendation about which video to make first, contact us with a link to the page you would put it on.