Should You Include Videos On Your Website?

By Author: Gerard Martin
Total Articles: 14
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From the birth of the World Wide Web in 1990's up to the present, websites have continuously evolved. You could see a lot of changes and improvements to the way websites look on a particular browser. Today, graphic images have become more vivid, texts have been animated, and videos seem to be a regular feature of a website. The question now remains, should you also include videos on your website?

In order to fully satisfy this question, you need to take a look at the pros and cons of having a video on your website. You must take a look at the type of website that you have. Is it for a business venture? Is it a personal site where you just want to share to distant relatives the special events in your life? Knowing the particular type of website that you have can help you determine whether you need to include videos or not considering that while videos are really great to view over the Internet, it has its downsides as well.

Videos are really heavy for a website. This means that it would take time for a viewer to be able to completely load the video on his end and view it. This can be augmented if the connection ...
... speed of the viewer is more than 1Mbps. However, if the video that is being loaded runs up to several megabytes, then loading time would still be very slow.

On the other hand, however, putting a video on a site is one way for you to capture your audiences' attention and provide the information that they need in a matter of seconds. That is, if you are able to have your video load fast. A good web designer Toronto has would usually suggest, in instances like these, that, instead of directly uploading your video to your site, you can just upload it over a third party site such as YouTube and embed the link on to your site.

A good web designer Toronto has would also suggest that, if you want to keep your video from interfering with your site's loading time, you should not have it automatically play and loop once the site is opened. A better way would be to have the reader play the video themselves.

Bottom line is, the use of video should be keep to a minimum. Having a web designer Toronto has put too many videos, animations and clips on your site can slow down your site's loading time which can lead to you losing precious prospective clients.