Building a web presence with video

Having a website is essential for just about every organization today. Whether for a small business, a charitable group, or a large corporation, a website is often the first point of contact that an individual has with an organization. Utilizing video – as commercials, promotional pieces, or just as information items – is an effective way of engaging viewers on your website and strengthening your web presence.

A website vs web presence

It’s important to know the difference between having a website and having a web presence. A website is your company’s online home, but it’s only a piece of your web presence. A web presence includes all of the online activities your company engages in. That can include videos posted to YouTube or Vimeo, photo galleries on Flickr, a blog, a Kickstarter page, and other posts on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Creating video allows you to expand your online presence because video can be posted on various sites aside from your own, and can become sharable social media content. If you’re thinking of creating a professional video for your business, remember that it can exist in many places beyond your website.  The more places it’s posted, the more viewers you can reach and drive to your website.

Video keeps people’s attention

Earlier this year, a study from Microsoft revealed that people generally lose concentration after eight seconds – a shorter attention span than a goldfish, which can stay focused for a solid nine seconds. The research suggests that our multi-screen lives are making it harder for us to filter out irrelevant stimuli.

That being said, a video on your website is an effective way to keep viewers focused on your messaging. Rather than relying on visitors to search through your site to find out more about you, you can deliver that information to them in a way that keeps their attention. It’s easier to watch a professionally produced video than it is to navigate around a website looking for information. It takes much less time and effort to watch a video than to read an article.

Take, for example, a video Costal Productions created for M Montreal Hostel as seen above.  In the first few seconds alone, the video instantly conveys how beautiful Montreal is and that M Montreal Hostel is a clean, modern and safe service.

Benefits of video on your website

Videos encourage visitors to your website to stay on the site longer, and that means they spend more time seeing and hearing the message or messages that you want to convey about your business. Videos that are thought out make your message easy to absorb as people tend to digest information that they see and hear faster than information they read.

Additionally, video allows viewers get to know your business on a more personal level – it can put a human face on your content. In doing so, the information you present stays in the mind of the viewer even after they navigate away from the page.  The right video may also help build trust, and assist in making sales conversions. 

Lastly, video can help boost your website’s search ranking. With three billion searches per month, YouTube is the second most used search engine.  People are using YouTube to research services, watch reviews, and learn more about topics that interest them.  As Google owns YouTube, creating engaging videos sends strong signals to the search engine that helps your site rank higher in search results.

If you’re ready to put a professional video on your website, your Kickstarter page, or on your social media channels, contact Costal Productions and let us know what you envision.