The benefits of having video and photographic content on your website are hard to overstate.
Not only does high-quality video and photographic content improve the experience of your visitors; media-rich pages considerably outperform those that are text-heavy. So when you’re designing your company’s website, you will certainly be looking to include multimedia content on most, if not all, of your pages. However, simply including such content isn’t a free ticket to having the best and most SEO-friendly page on the web. The strategic use of video and photographic content is key to effectively leverage this digital marketing tool.
So which one is best?
The answer is neither. Video and photographic content both have outstanding advantages, but are appropriate for different applications. For example, it is perhaps not in your best interest to play your company’s awesome culture video next to text that outlines the main features of your brand new product. Thus, a savvy digital marketer must identify where to employ each type of content.
Photography
Pictures are your best option when you have important text content that you don’t want to distract your web visitors from. The fact that photographic content is static means that it doesn’t have the tendency to draw the visitor’s eye constantly away from text. As such, almost all website backgrounds, sidebars, and headers are photographic content. The more important and dry your text is, the more dull your photos should be. This all in the pursuit of ensuring that your photographic content serves to enhance, not divide, your web visitor’s experience.
Photography holds some considerable advantages over graphic content, owing to the reality of it. For example, it is well-known that images of faces have an outsize ability to engage web visitors. Moreover, high-quality photographic content has a considerable wow-factor. It can serve to strike the visitor and even evoke emotion in a way that graphic content is unable to accomplish. Though it is often more expensive, there are certainly some advantages to leveraging high-quality photographic content over graphic content.
Photographs should be relevant. Though including photos helps your page’s search ranking, if they are irrelevant or distracting they are not worth having. Thus, ensure that if you’re going to use photographic content, it is relevant and of high quality. Photographic content should also always be embedded one way or another in the web page. That way, your visitor is not required to click on a link. Links require action from your visitor and will result in navigation away from the current page. At the very least, make use of an embedded gallery, so that photo content is visible and the viewer is not required to navigate away from your content.
Some examples of where photography can be used on a web page:
- Company photo on the “About Us” page
- Picture of your product on the related product’s page
- Relevant pictures on blog posts
Video
Video has an unparalleled ability to engage your web audience. It can quickly capture the attention of your visitors, which makes it an outstanding tool for sharing a message. However, video content has two considerable downfalls. It’s expensive, and it can be distracting. Thus, the savvy online marketer must identify the ideal spots to publish video content so that it is optimally leveraged.
So what are those ideal places? The key consideration is whether or not there is text content on the page that you want your visitor reading. Unlike photographic content, video content is, by definition, dynamic. It is motion that makes video so engaging, and it is also motion that ensures that viewers’ eyes will be drawn away from all else on the web page. Fortunately, there are conveniently simple tactics to allow video content and text on the same page. Simply ensure that video content is not visible alongside your important copy on the typical web visitor’s screen.
These main points addressed, you should identify where video can be most effective, as video production represents a somewhat considerable investment in your website. Video is very effective when leveraged as a complement to very dense, esoteric copy. For example, if your company has released a very complex new product, the copy may be necessarily long and dry. An explainer video embedded above or below the copy can serve to hit the key advantages of your innovation in an engaging, informative way.
Other great places to include video content include:
- A corporate overview video on your homepage
- A company culture video on your “Careers” page
- A testimonial video on your “Our Clients” page
Do you have ideas about where your photographic and video content is best positioned on your website? Join the discussion by leaving a comment below!
