Kleinburg Brewery
- design
- / web
Video sliders may have been developed in an effort to make a website stand out or to create visual interest on a web page. They may even have been included in an effort to help Google rank web pages higher.
But video sliders should never be used as a background, for many reasons. If you currently have a video slider on your website, you might want to ditch it.
Here are just a few reasons why.
Increased Load Time
The more you overload your web pages, the longer they’ll take to load. No user wants to sit around waiting for a web page to load and will be more likely to hit the back button and leave your website. Videos can bog down web pages and increase loading time, which is reason enough not to include them.
You’ll Get the Blame For Crappy Videos
There is a chance you will be using videos that are not actually hosted on your server. But that doesn’t really matter in the eyes of the user. If your video is bad or it is not loading properly, you will be the one to blame for it. Not only that, but your overall website and the design will look bad.
Videos Sliders Are Distracting
Of course, you want to create visual interest and capture users’ attention when they visit your website. But a video slider or background used improperly can actually be more of a distraction than anything else. The idea is to engage with a user and get them to perform your specific call-to-action. However, videos can distract viewers from your web page’s CTA or main message, which is the opposite of what you want to achieve.
Autoplay is Annoying
Users are not in control of the video sliders. They play automatically and slide from one image or caption to the next without the user interfering. Why does this suck? Well, for viewers who are actually interested in reading the text in that slide, they may not have enough time to. Instead, the slider will automatically forward to the next slide, leaving the user hanging.
For viewers who are totally disinterested in the slides, you’ll just leave with an extra step to scroll down to the information they actually want to see above the fold. Wasting visitors time can be crucial for conversions.
A Start Button in the Background Makes No Sense
What makes having a start button in the background video logical in any way? It doesn’t! Having a call-to-action I the background makes no sense at all. Both of these should be avoided.
Video Sliders Hurt Conversion Rates
You need to be very careful when using video backgrounds. They don’t usually work, and if they do, it’s only for extremely focused niches or specific landing pages. Otherwise, all you’ll end up doing is negatively impacting your conversion rates.
Your Site Won’t Be Mobile Friendly
Video backgrounds do nothing for mobile friendliness. Instead, all you will be doing is using up all that precious mobile data and slow down the speed of your website for those who are not on wi-fi.
Video slider backgrounds really should be left behind, no matter how popular they may have been or continue to be. They do little for the user, which is who you should really be focusing, and they do little for you as well since they will slow down your site and affect your SERP rankings on Google (but we will discuss this in details in our next blog).
Ditch the video sliders and focus on web design that actually enhances your web content and user experience.