When I meet someone new and they ask what I do for a living, I tell them video production. More often than not, they'll ask: do you make web videos?
It's not surprising. Most of the requests I get are for web videos, and I love it. Let me tell you why: web videos allow me to be so incredibly flexible in terms of creativity, and they let my clients be flexible in terms of content. Today, people *expect* to see video on websites. What used to be considered cutting edge is now the norm.
When you're creating a video for your website, consider the following:
Draw Attention
Your web video needs to strike a balance in terms of fitting in with the rest of your site, but also standing out as a featured item on the page. If it blends in too much with the rest of the elements, your visitors might miss it. A little note above your video that says "Click Here to Find Out How We Can Help You" lets people know it's not just a still graphic.
Consider the Layout
You'll want to give your video a prominent home on your page, so if you happen to be revamping your site, it's the perfect time to create a web video. What's great about web videos is that they can be so flexible in terms of size and shape. For years, all television had an aspect ratio of 4x3. Today, our high def TVs are all 16x9. But with a web video, they can be any dimension you want! I recently came across one that went across the length of the web page, but was very narrow from top to bottom-- the dimensions were about 16x4. It looked amazing and fit in perfectly with the rest of the site.
Think About Scale
Last week I watched a really cute web video-- the border was an elaborate picture frame and all the video was inside. It's a great idea except... well, to fit all the video inside the picture frame it was really small, which made the text hard to read and the person on camera hard to see. When making a TV commercial, it'll probably be viewed on a 50" widescreen TV, but web videos are just a few square inches. You'll want to take great care with every millimeter of precious real estate of that screen. People and objects should be shot tightly and text should be large.
No Need to Rush
Remember how I said web videos give my clients flexibility in terms of content? The reason is that there's no time restrictions on web videos. Unlike commercials, where you often have just 30 seconds to get your point across, web videos give you unlimited time to pique the interest of visitors to your site. You don't want to be too long winded though or people will lose interest-- one to three minutes is a perfect range.
If your website doesn't have video yet, what are you waiting for? Adding video to your site makes it attractive, interactive and dynamic.
