Site visitors love video. You love site visitors. Surely you and video should get together
Words only go so far, as this sentence demonstrates.
Even the most compelling collection of words requires a commitment on the reader’s part to actually read them. For many site visitors, it seems so much easier to just press “play.” And once that’s done, the pure power of images and sound can wash over and captivate even today’s attention-challenged populace.
Compelling videos don’t need to be major productions. Here’s proof.
Here is a brief video we put together featuring our lead designer, Olaf, presenting a sales kit we produced for our client CaroCon. Maybe that description sounds less than riveting, but just give it a chance.
See what we mean? We show that video to clients all the time. It’s popular. We’ve had viewers offer to buy not just a sales kit, but Olaf. This is the power of video. (By the way, Olaf is not for sale.)
Beware the temptation of dashing off a production with your smartphone.
Video production is so much cheaper than it used to be—and this is a great development. In addition, viewers are much more accepting of sub-Star Wars production values. However, quality still matters. We have seen videos created with hand-held smartphones that embarrass us—not because we had anything to do with making the videos (we didn’t) but because we share the planet with those who did. The video of Olaf above was comparatively easy to shoot, but it did require lights, a decent camera, basic sound equipment, some knowledge of direction, and editing.
We monitor how visitors interact with your video.
If you’ve got video on your site—it doesn’t matter whether it was produced by us or not—you need to know how your site visitors are responding to it. We use advanced analytical tools to track the behavior of everybody who clicks the “play” button. Heat maps show us which parts they watched, and whether they skipped anything—all kinds of useful data.
Watching a video doesn’t have to be a passive experience.
We can overlay your video with invitations to click to learn more, or to enter an email address, or any number of other actions. As rich as the experience can be to just watch and listen, a video can also prompt action.
We can make a really good video without even cranking a camera.
If you’re like most companies, you’ve got assets lying around that are just begging to be artfully assembled into an irresistible work of commercial communication. A good example of this is a little number we call Raising the Hunley, which recounts a client’s involvement in raising a Civil War-era submarine from the sea floor. We created this piece using photos (and a smidgen of footage) that the client already possessed, as well as public domain images we rounded up from the web. We wrote a script, designed a title, recorded voiceover, composed music and before you knew it, our editor had turned it into a mini masterpiece. Here, check it out:
Enough words! Or at least enough written words. Let’s talk!
