Website Video Production for Corporate Business: A Simple Guide
It is now the beginning of 2009 and we, the avid users of interactive technology, are riding the crest of a Golden Wave of corporate video and website video production possibilities. I have no doubt that in a conceptually altered Chinese calendar this would be the ‘Year of WebVideo’ in all its various forms and methods of implementation. Anyway, I’ve been reading about it and this is the impression people in the know give me.
Technology has moved forward again and new encoding procedures coupled with a general awareness of storytelling have brought the great and fantastic possibilities of video online and in the hands of the common man.
Their gross deal of less than £150,000 is obviously crying out for an effective means of one-on-one communication and I read at some point that potential customers are 4 times more likely to become actual customers if your web presence is adorned with the corporate video luminosity. People buy people! For some time now, CEOs everywhere have been striving to put in place the most efficient systems and operations that will take full advantage of this much-touted paradigm shift in online visual expectation.
The figures are all there. Findings in the US market have indicated that the number of consumers actively engaged in viewing a website’s video production increased by 18% in the second half of 2006. A total of 3.7 billion views were viewed. The ratios between men and women remain almost even on a 52-48 percentage scale. Surprisingly, in 2006 it was Yahoo Video that led the pack with around 21 million visitors per month.
MySpace came in second with around 20 million a month. So, with the stats in mind, I guess it wasn’t all that surprising to see Google gobbling up YouTube, which was getting around 16 million faces a month.
According to Jack Flanegan, executive vice president of ComScore Media Metrix, who, among other things, provides detailed analysis of consumer activity online, says: “Consumers clearly view video as one of the most accessible, engaging, and engaging sources of content. and entertaining on the web. “. And, well… I completely agree. The video has an accessible base in reality, and…all things considered…there’s a thirst for it. We are all obsessed with peeking through the crack in the door, looking without ‘being watched’.
Video was built for this kind of mindset. No way would I be writing this blog about some flawed and useless communication format sent to the history archives to hang out with smoke signals. Oh no, not me! I am here and now and so is online video, and in this here and now, if you want to make some money through your online presence, web video is the progressive medium to employ.
Forget expensive call centers and put your customer service representative on your site on an interactive video screen for first-hand guidance. Why have a static image of your product when a WebVideo can change more units? Go ahead, make that move to get a full understanding of socially relevant media implementation, go ahead, get the upper hand. This is the 21st century in the history of the excellent beast that is man. What? Don’t have video on your website?
How to keep people’s interest? Things must be very difficult for you. How do you manage? Anyway, that’s what people were saying about the websites and it soon caught on. Now look where we are. If the Internet is just another room to watch, then it stands to reason that you have a TV in the corner.
So how do you go about using video on your website? What is the correct format? More importantly, how should it be? Obviously, with the advent of new encoding procedures, implementing video on the web has become incredibly easy. At the forefront of this new wave of encoding is the On2 VP6 codec, which is primarily used in Macromedia Flash 8 and later. The ‘flash player’ is freely available for download and is reportedly found on 96% of all Internet-enabled Windows and Macintosh computers. Which is pretty high stat-wise. Java (84%), Windows Media Player (87%), and Apple Quicktime (59%) lag behind.
Flash allows anyone to stream video from their browser’s cache at a fraction of the size of other formats thanks to On2 VP6 compression. It also has a whole different level of interactivity options that none of the others have. With flash you can play a hundred videos through the same file without leaving the page and tag a form at the end of the video asking for comments. This will surely keep people immersed in an interactive video experience. WARNING – Ideas not supplied. Well… not for free, that’s for sure. Flash was built for the active medium of the Internet, and it’s flourishing.
Microsites or the big boom in .tv sites are the high end of video usage for many businesses, but the high end means high prices, maybe six thousand more isn’t in your budget. The average company will probably find use for a handful of videos for an initial outlay of a couple thousand dollars. Obviously, there will be niche markets where companies will have to have video on their site and they won’t be able to function without it. Very soon, although everything will be so. As prescient as it sounds, I can only imagine this kind of thing snowballing. Remember the Golden Wave. Ride it and bloom. Because if you don’t, it will make you grow.
Anyway there are companies that will put together a 1 minute video for around £500 but I have seen these videos and from a professional point of view I know they are operating on a second rate level. The obvious lack of ideals and perfectionist aspirations belongs only to the type who surprises himself too easily. Another form of online video is the 30-second space on the home page. This is fast becoming the successor to the animated header.
The web has been a largely silent affair, with users choosing to listen to their favorite band while browsing. Video is changing that, and users are getting used to a bit of noise. Over time, the expectation values will change and the sound on every website will certainly become normal. This is why an intro based on a 30 second dynamic montage will be successful.
The next step is the talking head, which can last anywhere from 20 seconds to 3 minutes. The talking head can offer a much more subtle welcome message, and when combined with the use of graphic elements and transparent backgrounds, it can still retain an element of entertainment. It has great simplicity that doesn’t overburden the user and can be had for around a great minute or more depending on your graphics or title demands.
Product or service explanations are very popular uses of the talking head by many companies, from insurance to mobile phones. A kind of very subtle advertisement or showcase to see at the discretion of the users. I mean, why have a bunch of pictures taken from every angle imaginable when for a little extra money you can have a 30 second video of someone showing off the product?
No doubt the usual ‘enlarge image’ link will change to something like ‘view product video’. A handful of these can be produced for around £500 each and considering the ‘click through’ rate, you’ll surely make your money back by trading in additional units.
All of this, of course, is a small change compared to what most people are responding to. That my readers are less than drunk is, of course, entertainment! By far the most popular video usage of all time. Billions of people, like fragmented herds of hedonistic pigs, utterly alienated from police-state politics, are eagerly lining up to see the latest ‘close-shaven’ video or a couple of seventeen-year-olds trying to sing “I Will” by Whitney Houstons. I will always love you.” This is bedroom theater at its finest. This is where the mainstay of the WebVideo opportunity lies.
Well… where does this leave the average website I hear you bleating about? Simple. The popularity of the format has very specific impacts on culture and daily habits. Just look at how far the display screen has come in all its variable guises. The impact that entertainment video has on the web is perfectly aligned with a certain expectation. Users grow through saturation with an idea to expect an element of it in all aspects of their daily lives.
Most of the world still have boring jobs and still crave excitement and entertainment. The more saturated we are with website video entertainment as it is, the more demanding we become. Static websites will always exist because some things need to be static, but hey… if they can be brought to life, they better be, because otherwise, I’m out of you. Bored!!!
The web may well be a fascinating work of art conceptually as a whole, but individual sites are no more than mere brushstrokes on a gigantic canvas of information. There are many people in the world, perhaps 7 billion in all, and a few billion of them have Internet-ready computers, a thirst for entertainment, a short attention span, and a pocket full of money to spend on anything that can sustain their interest for a long time. enough to take out your bank card. If you don’t have a website video one way or another, well… what do you have?
