5 Surprising Ways to Optimize Websites With Video

As video continues its steady climb to dominance in the world of content marketing, the appeal of a video-first marketing strategy has become increasingly evident. The endless stream of jaw-dropping stats attest to the medium’s power to supercharge the audience experience regardless of where it is deployed across the sales funnel.

To make video the workhorse of their strategies, content marketers can implement an asset-conversion process – transforming text- and static-based content into videos.

Asset conversion strategies are particularly useful for websites, where the low-hanging fruit opportunities are obvious – adding an explainer, brand, or welcome video to the home page, upgrading About pages with corporate culture content, and optimizing product pages with demo clips, etc. Such transformations have been shown to decrease bounce rates, increase session time, boost page views, and lift conversions.

But the magic doesn’t need to end there. Opportunities abound for additional website asset conversions where you might least expect them. Let’s look at five often overlooked areas for video optimization.

1.  User and customer/client feedback

Analytics platforms offer loads of data on how your users found your site and what they did when they got there, but to go deeper it’s essential to know what matters to visitors on a more personal level. Survey tools like Survey Monkey and others are a big help in this regard, but like all text-based communication tools, they lack the trust-building power of direct human interaction.

And that’s where the value of new video-based feedback tools is apparent. For example, with Typeform’s new VideoAsk platform, business representatives can craft personalized video messages to solicit feedback on blog posts, webinars, and events, and to field customer service questions from their audiences.

This asynchronous communication tool allows audience members to respond with videos of their own or by audio, text, or multiple-choice answer lists. As a visual feedback medium, customer feedback videos also enable marketing teams to go beyond mere data analysis and obtain invaluable qualitative information from users’ facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language.

Example:

Amazon doesn’t use a single video feedback system, but allows customers to post feedback or review videos directly on the product pages, like this five-minute video from a customer who purchased a selfie-ring lighting setup:

2.  Team bios

Since putting a human face on your brand is one of the most effective ways to build trust, converting or supplementing the team bios on your website should be on top of the video optimization list. What better way to pull back the curtain on the people behind your brand than to feature short, simple videos of team members talking about themselves and their roles from inside your workplace.

There are plenty of ways to approach this kind of content, from barebones smartphone and webcam videos to stylish, professional productions with illustrative b-roll showing your team members at work. For more a more detailed look and ideas, check out Megan Lang’s iMPACT article.

Example:

Puget Systems, a Washington-based custom-computer-building company, supplements its text-based team bios with video. Each person shares what they do at the company along with some personal interests.

3.  FAQs

Businesses are always looking for ways to improve customer support and reduce their support ticket load. Indeed, market analysts now consider the quality of customer experience as a brand differentiator that surpasses even price in importance in the digital age.

On this front, the value of a good FAQ page cannot be overstated. Not only do FAQs provide new customers with the information they need to make a purchase decision, they also save your team from having to take time to respond to simple questions, and they can even improve your search rankings.

As research indicates, most users prefer video to text in brand communication. Video-conveyed information also is more likely to be retained than text-based communication. Converting or supplementing your FAQ answers to convenient short informational videos can give you an edge over the text-only competition.

You can use a spokesperson format, motion-graphic text, or informational skits to get your message across, but be sure to keep each video concise and focused on a single answer (or topic) to ensure the best results. To get more advice, check out this Lemonlight article.

Example:

This Florida-based law firm, Whited, publishes video FAQs. While each video answers one question, viewers can see additional questions below each video:

4.  Live chat

Like video, live chat has emerged as a popular and effective digital marketing tool. It dramatically slashes response time and was shown to increase customer satisfaction by 20 percentage points in a 2014 survey by Moxie.

By incorporating video into live chat, the ability to talk face-to-face with prospects offers a great way to build trust by further humanizing service interactions. This approach can be particularly useful for companies that want to provide a more direct, personalized demo experience for physical products or for service businesses looking to provide real-time consultations for prospective or existing clients.

Example:

U.K.-based Skoda offers one-on-one live tours of their vehicle showroom, allowing potential customers to see each feature they want and get their questions answered by a person in real time.

5.  Thank you pages

Another frequently underused website feature, thank you pages are an important touchpoint for nurturing leads by improving the customer experience and fostering loyalty to your brand. Neil Patel could call the thank you page a foot-in-the-door (FITD) opportunity. People who take one action – opting into a lead-magnet offer, making a purchase, subscribing to a newsletter, etc. – are better primed to take similar follow-up actions when asked.

Use the FITD opportunity on your thank you pages to ask action takers to complete an additional task – fill out a survey, follow you on social media, or use a discount code.

Where does video come into play on these pages? Research shows that people are 34 times more likely to respond to asks made in person versus in writing. In the digital realm, video is the closest tactic to make that FITD follow-up ask face to face.

Example:

Wistia, a video-marketing software company, appropriately incorporates a video into its thank you reply when someone reaches out through its website about pricing:

Optimize video conversions

A seamlessly integrated video strategy across your website offers great value to your brand and your audience. No matter whether it’s your thank you page messages, FAQs, team bios, live chats, or another tactic, converting or supplementing with video gives real life to your brand and presents a practical face-to-face opportunity for interaction.

Bottom line: More video can mean better results across your website.

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Video also offers a prime opportunity to learn remotely. To help grow your content marketing skills, CMI is posting full-length videos of some 2019 Content Marketing World presentations. You can check them out here.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute