Video content is a great way to engage and inform your website visitors, but it can also slow down your website’s loading speed. In this article, we’ll discuss the impact of video content on website speed and how to optimize your videos for performance.
Load Speed and Video Content
We live in a world where we look for instantaneous answers and results, users expect websites to load quickly, or interest is lost and the user moves on to something that will satisfy their needs faster. Typically users expect a website to load within just a couple of seconds, so maintaining a fast load time is imperative.
Video usage is growing and is one of the most easily consumed forms of content, being impactful on both TV and social media, but an often overlooked use of video is on a businesses website. Video can be used to engage visitors on the website, telling a brand story, a testimonial or even communicating an offer. Alongside this, video utilisation can also help be an effective SEO signal to increase rankings in the Google SERP.
Despite the significant benefits of video, the way that they are incorporated into the website can impact page load times, creating a poor user experience and potential for lost traffic. The impact largely depends on how videos are embedded.
Video Embedding Options
One option is to self-host your videos without relying on an external video player. The benefit of this approach is having complete control over the content and appearance while avoiding any concerns about intrusive ads. However, it’s important to note that self-hosted videos can impact your website’s loading speed, potentially leading to longer loading times compared to using external video hosting solutions.
An alternative option is to embed an external player such as YouTube. This utilizes javascript to stream videos rather than directly embedding them into your website’s native structure. As a result, native elements of your site, such as text, images, and navigation menus, can load fully before the video content loads. This implementation follows an asynchronous loading sequence, which helps maintain optimal page loading times, ensuring that your video content does not hinder the overall performance of your website.
Crisp Video did an excellent article and infographic on this, detailing this further.
Balancing Video & UX
Finding the right balance between engaging video content and maintaining a positive user experience is crucial for website success. On the one hand, videos can be a great way to capture attention and keep users engaged. On the other hand, too many videos can slow down a website and make it difficult to navigate. The key is to find a happy medium where videos are used effectively to enhance the user experience without becoming a distraction.
In order to improve the user experience for video content on mobile devices, developers should consider using smaller file sizes for videos, optimizing videos for mobile devices, and providing alternative formats for users who cannot watch videos.
The Verdict
Video has many benefits and should be included in any website build, especially when using a reputable video production company.
To ensure video integration has minimal impact on site performance and user experience, embedding a media player is the best practice.