Incorporating Video Into Your Web Design

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is whether or not to incorporate video into your web design. If you do then you’ll need to think carefully about placement of your video. Will you have one on every page of your website or just the home page? And where exactly on the page will you put your video?

To make that decision you’ll need to think about eye tracking studies. The famous graph of Google’s eye tracking study shows that most visitors to a web site will have eyes on the top left corner of your web page. In fact, the eyes scan from left to right and top to bottom in a Z pattern. That should make it easy, right?

No. Not really. What’s the purpose of your video? Furthermore, what’s the purpose of the page on which your video is presented?

These are two very important questions. Some people use the video as a sales tool to get people to opt in to their list or become customers. In that case, a paragraph of text followed by your video on center page might do the trick. But I’ve also seen videos – informational videos primarily – on the right top side of the page next to the main content column. And I’ve seen on the top left of the page as well.

The key to video placement on the page is to think about your visitor. Will the video be the most important element on the page? If so then premium placement should be the order. If something else is more important then place the video where it will enhance the page but not be center of attention.

Video marketing has arrived and webmasters who decide to use video on their web pages will need to  experiment to come up with the best placement.