3 Creative ways to make more use of video on your website

written by Pauline den Ouden on May 19, 2021

If you are not using video on your website you are already way behind your competition. Video is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. You can put together an in-house produced docu-series or simply mash up some product shots and stock video but the important thing is to work out a plan and set of goals you want to achieve with your video.

What will make your video stand out from the crowd is if you get those creative juices flowing and do something unique. This article will try to give you a couple of pointers on how to do this effectively.

The Homepage

We are going to talk about what should be the hero of any website, the homepage. When visitors come to your site you have a very short time to make an impression and suck them in, as little as 0.05 seconds. With such a vanishingly small window it is important to maximize the visual appeal of your landing page and an effective way of doing this is to use video.

The type of video you use on your homepage will depend on the type of business you are and what your video marketing strategy is trying to achieve. If you are not necessarily a household name, where Grampa Erving knows your product, market cap, and Twitter handle then an explainer video is an excellent way to let people know what you are about.

We’ve moved past the days of the loud, autoplaying video which makes everyone in the office give you a dirty look as you open the page and has you reaching for the close tab button in a panic. You can embed your video by either self-hosting or using a third-party platform like Youtube or Vimeo.

Avoid cluttering up your homepage and interfering with your page aesthetic by putting a play button on one of the images on your homepage which points to a lightbox embedded video. This subtle call to action fosters engagement with your product and doesn’t require a huge amount of reformatting as you can use one of the images already on your homepage.

Check out this great example from Searay

Testimonials

Once you have your homepage up to scratch, having hooked them with eye-catching visual content, it’s time to reel them in for that conversion. The way to do that is to create trust in your brand and demonstrate your value. The answer for how to do this is video; specifically, testimonial videos that drive purchase intent.

Video testimonials have an edge over written testimonials as they put a human face on the message you are trying to convey, adding persuasiveness and personality.

Broadly speaking a video testimonial should be an authentic, specific story that focuses on the results enjoyed by your satisfied customers.

Testimonials are tried and tested but that is not to say that there is no room for creativity in how you present them on your website.

• You could have your customers try the product in real-time and show their (hopefully positive) reactions.
• You can cut your videos so that the audio on your testimonial is playing over shots of your product in action.
• You can cut your testimonial with information about your product bridging the gap between the explainer video and the customer testimonial.

There are hundreds of ways to dress up a tired testimonial, just have a look and see what other companies are doing and find that inspiration. Have a look at this choice example from Magic Flask.

New angles of attack

If you are still searching for ideas then try looking at your product from a whole new angle, literally. Take your product and see if you can find some interesting way of showing it off on your website.

If your product is made up of a lot of components then completely deconstruct it and creatively display the parts. Honda did this in 2003 in their spectacular video “Cog” and it is just as powerful now as it was then.

If your production process is more gripping than its component parts then consider using a time-lapse of your process like Mini did to great effect.

Or you can take another angle completely and get some drone footage like this sensational, viral video from this year of a drone flying around a bowling alley in Minnesota.

Hopefully, this article has sparked some ideas for you, and don’t be scared to experiment. Whether you have the budget of Honda or a small bowling alley remember; creativity is free.