What do you use to embed product videos and why?
Hey, I'm building a landing page for my app. I plan to include a product walk-through video and probably a couple of smaller ones as feature illustrations on a loop.
I've seen that most of the landing pages are using Youtube, Vimeo, Loom or similar, at least for the walk-through. As a consumer, I never saw value in that, it rather felt a bit unprofessional. So I'm wondering, is there some additional growth factor behind it I don't see? Or is it just a matter of convenience, cost-saving or something else?
I'm setting it up myself on Vercel (+ Cloudflare not to use Vercel's bandwidth), so I can host them without issues, but it made me wonder if I'm missing something. Could you tell me how do you approach that and why?
I think RunKit's website does a good job demonstrating how this is done the right way. If you take a look at their site, they have plenty of video demos. I personally would use the native <video> element - it gives you more flexibility.
I think the thing that makes videos best for demos is for quick demonstrations where the controls are hidden. <video> does this well because it keeps things nice and clean. The problem with embeds using YouTube and Vimeo is you end up seeing a big logo and other styling that might not fight well with your site design. YouTube embeds for instance does some styling out of the box.
However, I think the biggest problem with self-hosting would probably be the compatibility. YouTube has a good buffering system that allows users to view the video without lagging. While some newer versions of browsers have already implemented this by default, you don't get the same promise of consistency.
It's really up to you to decide in the end which sacrifices you value less. Let me know which one you chose! 👍
Why do you think it looks "unprofessional"?
By the way, I used to also think YouTube looked unprofessional, because I didn't like the YouTube logo, and the worst part are the random suggested "More videos" that pop up when the video is paused and at the end. But there is a fix for this which I'll talk about in a second.
But I've since changed my mind b/c I think the average user doesn't care that it looks "unprofessional", and I think YouTube is really easy to use and set up.
As a user/viewer, one thing I do like about YouTube is that I can easily navigate the video using keyboard shortcuts that I am accustomed to. For example, for longer product demo videos, I like speeding up the replay to 1.5x using the > key , I like navigating +/- 5 seconds with arrow keys, and pause/play with spacebar. Often, html5 embeds are lacking in these keyboard shortcuts which I find frustrating.
But the main benefit of using YouTube is that if you have other videos on your channel, then you can promote those using this technique:
https://www.capturevideoandmarketing.com/blog-news/related-videos-youtube-embeds
Basically, adding ?rel=0 setting makes the YouTube player show videos from your channel rather than random videos.
This is the main reason why I would use YouTube... I think having a complementary YouTube marketing channel is good for your product, and if you have other videos then you should go with YouTube and encourage users to check out your channel.
But if you are really bothered by the "unprofessional" look, then at least try to make your custom video embed easy to navigate with keyboard shortcuts. Maybe there's a library for that.
Hope this helps!
You can promote your channel with an embed as well, but then it's a little bit more work - sure...
The unprofessional stems from the youtube logo, random promoted videos and sometimes not matching look and feel. Some you can workaround and some you can't, but it's not a deal breaker of course.
My biggest gripe with YT (and probably all others) is that you need a consent for third-party cookies to display it, at least under GDPR. Maybe it's possible to set it up in your policy otherwise, but many sites have it like that.
I was unaware of the GDPR/cookie issue but a quick Google search suggests there may be a workaround:
https://complianz.io/youtube-and-the-gdpr-how-to-embed-youtube-on-your-site/
https://cookie-script.com/blog/how-to-add-youtube-videos-without-cookies
At the end of the day, you should do what you feel is best for your goals. To the end user, it probably doesn't matter. Good luck!
Sure, thanks for chiming in!
I also found some evidence, that embedding videos may boost your SEO (though found articles that refute that as well). Interesting. I might actually try both
https://www.39celsius.com/youtube-video-embeds-skyrocket-seo-exposure/
For me it's a combination; The embedded youtube, for the video tour/demo of the product, and the html5 video tags for showing features in action. But these are small in size.
One other approche can be using animated GIFs.
Check it out here: https://bluright.com
And why did you choose YouTube instead of embed for the tour?
I already have the video published to use for social media so why not use it here too?
And beside that, I can get some view statistics easily.
By the way @FBNKCMaster, I think you should use this technique on your Bluright video.
https://www.capturevideoandmarketing.com/blog-news/related-videos-youtube-embeds
Oh, thank you!
I'll check it out.
Haven't thought about statistics (esp segment popularity).
One other thing is saving the bandwidth ;)
I use the native html tag <video> when possible, because it allows me to easily tweak the controls or some aspects of the video that are difficult to change on iframe or other solutions. I agree completely with you that some solutions look very unprofessional
You can check an example of what I am saying on my website givebtc.tips/SubsCrypto
Yep, I planned to do the same
YouTube or Loom would be ideal. It's always helpful to keep it simple for a landing page.