Keeping up with Mobile Video
Over half of your business website traffic comes from mobile devices. Whether it’s tablet’s or smartphones, people aren’t looking at content the same way they used to. Of course you should already be aware of the rise of mobile viewerships over the past few years. If this is news to you, it might be too late. However, video for mobile has been a little slower on the uptake, and there are still some things you can do to make the best out of mobile video.
From Copy to Short Videos
Several years ago, scrolling through long copy and huge blog posts was the norm. As you would have noticed, if something looks like too much of a time investment, people will stop paying attention and move on to something more immediately satisfying. It’s sad but true, so you should be keeping your videos short and to the point. Even two minutes can be too long, especially for a social media video, where 30 seconds is the new norm. To keep attention, you have to keep up with their attention span, so keep your videos fast, to the point and get out.
The Call to Action
In this era of fast paced marketing, you have two things to include. The video and the call to action. The call to action is the thing that will direct your audience to their next step, and that can be getting them to your purchase page, getting them interested or to buy your products. On web hosting site Wistia, you can embed a link that will display at the end of the video so your video does all the work for you. Failing that, you can post a call to action in the description, something like “To find more about our products, click here,” and have the link take the viewer to your product page.
Responsiveness is Key
There’s nothing worse than buffering, is there? Those endless seconds wasted. If you have a clunky website, or embedded videos that won’t load, you’ve lost potential customers. As we’ve mentioned previously, attention spans are short and there’s nothing more frustrating than a slow loading video, or glitchy web design. Your web designers should obviously be ensuring that the content plays on mobile, but not only that, everything should be optimised for mobile to ensure that there is nothing to cause a pain point for your viewers. A site like Wistia or Vimeo should take care of most issues with unresponsive videos, but it’s still worth checking on both Apple and android devices and tablets.
Bigger is Better
When it comes to text and images in mobile videos, bigger is better. The smaller screens are getting higher in resolution, but it’s still difficult to show off any small details on a 5 inch screen. So the common trend in social media videos is to display large text over the video with the key messages of the video, or at the very least, easily readable subtitles. This is due to most mobile videos being watched with the sound off. Don’t overdo it as too much text can be overwhelming and difficult to read, your goal should be to have the same message understood with the sound on or off.
Your mobile audience is growing and growing rapidly. If you are looking to step into creating mobile-friendly videos, get in touch with Dream Engine today.
Ryan Spanger is one of Melbourne’s most respected and sought-after video production professionals. Ryan founded Dream Engine in 2002, and specialises in helping medium to large corporates, government departments, and the non-profit sector to connect with their audience more effectively by using video.
