Videos help landing pages perform better and improve conversion rates. This is especially true if you sell a complicated product that could be summed up neatly and concisely with a few seconds of video, if you work in a dull industry that could be spiced with an entertaining clip or if you sell something that is inherently visual.

The well-known statistics about the shareability, search-ranking prowess and the overall power of video as the most compelling online medium do not cease to be true on landing pages.

But landing pages must be uncluttered, clean and distraction free in order to perform well — and integrating video is a delicate matter that must be done right. Make quality videos a key part of your landing pages — but make sure to follow these tips.



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Break the (Almost) Unbreakable Autoplay Rule

Should you set videos to autoplay on your web pages? No!

There are few online experiences more painfully annoying than visiting a web page, only to notice that your browser is acting strangely sluggish … and then, bam! You’re startled out of your chair by a barrage of sound that you didn’t know was coming. If people want to play a video, they can hit play. There are almost no exceptions to this rule.

One of those exceptions, however, is landing pages. The goal of your landing pages should always be to get your buyer to perform the desired call to action as quickly as possible, without any clutter or distractions. New tools, such as Spaces, even focus on placing products with checkout within social media to eliminate losing visitors by leading them to a website.

As this tutorial points out, time is so unbelievably precious on landing pages that you have just a few seconds to hook a visitor or risk losing a conversion. If the video is queued up and ready to go, you save valuable time by not forcing your visitors recognize the video box and hit play. Also, since many landing pages don’t contain video, your visitors may not expect to have to take any action, which means they could miss the video altogether if you don’t select autoplay.

TIP: To learn how to embed your wideo on to a landing page, find out here.

Test Different Video Lengths

If there is one variable that you need to A/B test on landing pages, it is video length. The general rule for length on landing page video is to keep it as short as humanly possible while retaining the crucial information — and then make it shorter. But the reality is, with every second you trim, compelling information disappears right along with it.

It is almost always worth the production costs to make two different versions of your video and measure the metrics of each one to see if those few critical seconds really make a difference. Note: You should not test a short video and a long video, but instead test a short video and a shorter video.

Get the Dimensions Right

Use an aspect ratio calculator to make sure your video’s height and width are the correct dimensions. If your dimensions are off, your video will be distorted, and distorted video looks amateurish and campy.

Remember that Video is a Powerful SEO Tool

Unbounce reminds us that pages with video are 50 times more likely to end up on Google’s first page. Optimize your video for SEO by choosing a few good keywords to rank for — with matching titles and descriptions, of course — and by submitting a video sitemap to the search engines.

Well-done video can boost the performance of virtually everything measurable about landing page performance, including conversions and sales. Video can help you explain your product. Video can entertain. Video can help with branding. But most importantly, video can pack compelling and convincing information into the puny span of time that people spend on the average landing page. Should your landing pages contain video? Yes — but it has to optimized and designed specifically for landing pages to work.

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