Using Video With Your Website

With the coming about of Web 2.0 many websites have been adapted to include new Web 2.0 based features, and out of the birth of Web 2.0 has been the boom of online video which is now the focal point for many of the internet’s largest websites. Using video gives website another way in which they are able to present content to visitors and is a welcome alternative to classic methods such as standard HTML web pages and maybe the use of standard flash animation. Using video in your website is a good way of getting information across to your visitors first hand which otherwise may not be classed as verifiable if it was in text form; for example, some companies are now using video as a method of having customer testimonials on their website, since if they have real people giving them good testimonials via video then customers are more likely to be tempted into purchasing their goods or services – however, verifiable information should still be provided to an extent. However, a majority of online video is now the result of user generated content which is what has formed the main part of the Web 2.0 revolution, and sites like YouTube and Vimeo are now being used by existing websites to breathe new life into their content.

Video Technologies

There are many different forms of online video that can be used, and your choice of which video format that you think would be suitable for your website should be based on your requirements as well as which one you think has the best qualities both in terms of audio and video. The main form of video used by websites such as YouTube and Vimeo is flash, but this can have certain compability problems with computers that are over a certain age as well as certain web browsers. Because of the way that online videos have to be embedded into web pages, you have to ensure that your chosen embedding method will conform with W3C accessability standards and that the video will be able to play in all modern web browsers. The main video formats that can be used in web pages one way or another include:

• flash/FLV – flash is the main format used by many websites due to its small file size footprint as well as the ability to work in almost any web browser and operating system combination there is available – however, the ability to be playable in any web browser and on any operating system does come with the disadvantage that end users have to install the third party Adobe flash player on their computers in order for videos to be viewable
• AVI – AVI is a standard Microsoft video format and in most cases is only playable through Windows based computers that have Windows Media player installed on them – also the integration with other browsers isn’t easy since with Firefox installed on a Windows machine for example, you have to installed an extra Firefox plugin in order to allow AVI based and WMV based video files to be playable through the web browser
• WMV – WMV stands for Windows Media Video file meaning that it will only play on Windows based computers whilst certain programs are needed in order for it to be playable on other operating systems such as OSX – although this may prove to be a disadvantage for WMV, it is able to be used for HD video content which may be beneficial to some websites.

Choosing the right video format for your needs is important since you want to be able to strike the right balance between accessibility and video/audio quality. Most formats can be embedded into web pages one way or another, but it is important for you to ensure that the format that you have chosen will be usable in your web pages one way or another.

How Video Can Benefit Your Website

In the long term using video on your website will probably result in a higher visitor count for the main reason that visitors will be returning more frequently. Depending on the subject of your website, as long as you regularly update your video so that there is something new each time visitors come along is a good idea since this will mean that there is something for both new and returning visitors. Using video on your website can also help bring your website up to date with the Web 2.0 era which is one thing that many active websites are still lacking. In summary, using video on your website will benefit you in the following ways:

• higher visitor count – by adding regularly updated video content to your website you are giving visitors another reason to return, and the good thing about this is that returning visitors are more likely to refer your website to friends and colleagues who may also share the same interest that your website is based on – these new visitors are then likely to refer others who they know to your website which in the end will give you a higher visitor count
• a more up-to date website – by using video on your website you are able to bring it up to Web 2.0 standards, and if you allow your visitors to contribute their own videos to your website then you will be adopting the standards even more since you will be allowing the use of user-generated content on your website – alternatively you can use a forum to have user-generated content as part of your overall content
• regularly updated content – when using text content you may find it a long and boring process having to update every so often, but depending on what kind of person you are you may find it more rewarding to use video on your website more often and you may even find it easier to update than you do text content.

As you can see, using video with your website can bring you many advantages both in terms of website management and your overall visitor count each month. If you’re website may be a bit outdated in terms of content then you can use video with it as a way of modernising it but also as a way of breathing new life into it and being a bit different content wise.

Disadvantages of Online Video

Although it may seem that using video with your website as a new form of content, it does come with some disadvantages which may affect you based on the resources that you have assigned to the web hosting package that you are using. The main disadvantage of video is that if you host it locally within your web hosting account, your bandwidth usage is going to rocket up if you have a large number of visitors passing through each day – this could potentially mean that you will use up all of your monthly bandwidth allowance in a short amount of time meaning that you will have to purchase extra bandwidth. Overall, the main disadvantages of using video are:

• cost – if you are planning on using video for your website then you will find that there are many costs involved such as purchasing the software and in some cases equipment that you will need in order to produce videos for your website, and once you have the videos made and uploaded you will end up paying your web hosting provider for extra disk space and bandwidth so that visitors will be able to view them
• bandwidth and disk space – you will find that extra bandwidth and disk space will be required in order for you to be able to host your own videos in your web hosting account since most standard web hosting packages don’t come with large amounts of either in order to be usable in the context of hosting videos that are going to be streamed through a website.

Although the cost of using video on your website may put you off from doing so, there are many other methods that you can use for free that will still leave you with the desired affect that you were wanting to achieve with online video. Services such as Vimeo and YouTube will host your online videos for you and will even produce the necessary code to allow you to embed them into your web pages. Since the third party services will be hosting your videos on your behalf you won’t face any unwanted disk space or bandwidth bills.

In conclusion, using video on your website is a good way of stimulating new growth through the use of updated content. If you have the appropriate software and equipment that will allow you to produce video content for your website then it’s worth a go, however you should note that your web hosting account may not have large enough amounts of either disk space or bandwidth that will be able to cope with the video that you are uploading. In the case that you need extra disk space or bandwidth you will probably have to pay your web hosting provider extra for the necessary resources.