Online Video and Website Engagement

In today’s post, I’m going to evaluate our new online video marketing product Running Stills against website engagement, one of the 7 metrics for measuring online video marketing that I identified a couple of weeks ago.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuiciWZU5Rg[/youtube]

This crude video from a recent flight I took while traveling in Costa Rica is a great example of “engagement’ in action. Once you start watching, you won’t be able to turn away until you see how the video ends.

“Engagement” is a popular buzz-word right now in the Internet industry. People talk about creating “engaging” web content, “engaging” ad copy, etc. Because I’m a big believer in simplicity, I’m going to describe engagement as “face time for your website.”

We’ve all heard people talk about “face time” before. “If I can just get some face time with so-and-so, I know I can get their business.” Face time works because when you have a few minutes of someone’s attention, you’re able to get them to listen to what you say, trust you, and (hopefully) buy whatever it is that you’re selling.

Website engagement has all the same benefits. Website engagement is usually measured in terms of click-through rate and time. The more engaging your website is, the more likely people will read what you have to say, click on your links, and buy your product or service. Obviously, engagement is a good thing.

Embedding a video in your website boosts engagement in a few ways:

• A lot of people are lazy – many would rather listen and watch your video than study your well-written content and read. [I only say it this way because I do it myself.]

• Video offers instant gratification, something many website visitors enjoy.

• Since most people enjoy watching video, so it doesn’t feel like “work” when they’re

• Video has a load time (more about this in a second).

The reasons that video is engaging are pretty obvious, and when I have more time, perhaps I’ll put some numbers and hard date up alongside my reasoning.

One final note – because video has a few seconds of load time, website visitors often “browse” while they’re waiting. Don’t get me wrong – it wouldn’t be beneficial to make people wait more than a few seconds for a video to load. However, if your video needs 5-10 seconds to get started, and you happen to place some good written content just below the video player’s controls, you will see some benefits.

Our official launch of Running Stills is Thursday, April 9th. Wish us luck!