Recently I read an article which was about an interview. The interview itself was about marketing stuff (I won’t bother you with it, it was in Dutch). So the topic was not that bad, but still I had a hard time following the full interview.
The complete interview toke place in about 7 minutes and there were 2 people sitting at a table discussing some topics. But after a minute and half I start clicking in the progress bar to skip to next parts of the video to speed it up a bit. Is that because the video wasn’t that interesting as I just mention, or is that just me acting like the next generation, scanning the video instead of viewing it
After this happends I made a comment about this below that interview, but somehow it kept my mind busy and I felt I needed to write it down.
Most of you know how people read the web already, so just check out that page if you need more info on that. But could it be that we are also evolving to a new way of ‘reading’ online videos? Although you might think I’m the the only (although I don’t 
), there must be some explanation for this. Or at least some possibility to measure this and take actions.
Videos become important
Online video is booming. Not just now, but it growing fast for years and it’s getting bigger and bigger (so far the things you already knew..). But as it gets bigger, it becomes more common and familiar for users. Also videos aren’t execeptions anymore but everybody is pushing that information. As a reaction to those things the mass will start evolving their way of reading the videos, which means that we also need to adapt on the development side to be sure we can still deliver the message as intended.
How we will view videos
The big question will be ‘how do users view videos?’. Of course i don’t have a solid answer, but i can at least tell you my ideas and convert the tradional reading tips into viewing tips.
First start with translation Jakob Nielsen’s idea’s into meaningful tips for viewing online videos (so keep this article in mind):
- Highlight important information in the video (repeat, focus or use another technique to show that this info is important)
- Good structure of the video. Make the structure logical (follow AIDA) and make sure the user understands where it will lead to)
- Make sure people can check the information they want to without the need to view the complete videos or with the risk missing information (use markers, start your video with an option to jump to specific parts
- Make it fast to load, and beware of using HD as a lot of users might have interruptions during playback.
- Make it short, commercially short.
- Let people know the content of the video in the beginning (as the info in the descriptions might be lost when embedded).
That’s just a start keeping videos interesting for your target audience. It’s almost like giving them a presentation, but then more fluid, more cool and hopefully more interesting.
With some research we can probably come up with more stuff we need to focus on.
Mobile usage
A subject we have to keep in mind is that videos are very related to mobile. The mobile market is also still growing, mostly for next generation phones like the iPhone, Blackberries and Android cellphones.
On mobile phones people might even be harder to catch and to stay focussed than people viewing videos on their desktops. On a mobile you are always in a hurry, you sometimes need to pay more for your data, screen is smaller etc. So all above point also count for mobile users.
Wouldn’t it be cool when mobile users could just see what the video is about and then skip to the part that’s interesting for them, and afterwards feeling good instead of afraid that they missed something or they’ll get the biggest phone bill ever?
Measure videos
Somehow you need to measure how many people are viewing your videos, what they watched, whether they skipped sections etc. Although I won’t go deeper into these techniques now, I just wanted to let you know that this is possible with every analytics package like Google Analytics (use events or virtual pageviews) and you’ll have the first data inhouse within soon.
Another good suggestion to measure this is user testing. Just get someone of the streets, a few of time, and let them view your videos. Next to fun it will also come up with interesting details, give it a try.
Examples
I just want to show you that everything is possible already, but just a small bunch of people is using it. For example, did you see the Youtube Piano? This move is about playing piano directly by clicking in the movie. The technique behind this can be used for changing videos into more useful and interesting information.
I know that there are a lot of those examples so if you’d like to share your examples, feel free to post them here. If I’ll find some high quality videos myself which are matching the above information then I’ll post those as well.
