Attention spans on the web are short, mostly measured in seconds. Video tends to hold attention longer, which is one reason why it’s such a powerful marketing tool online. But how long does the average viewer watch?
The answer surprised me.
This site offers video hosting with some significant extras. Usability experts pioneered a technique called heat mapping. They measure people’s eye movements and clicks on a sample web page. They average lots of responses and produce a map showing the hot spots and cool spots. It can be a powerful way to improve web design.
Now you can do that with video using the hosting services at wistia.com
I’m not an affiliate or even a customer so I can’t vouch for the quality of their service. But I did find the ability to track video plays and produce a heat map showing how long people watch your video to be a useful metric. Wistia has averaged thousands of videos from their client base to come up with some interesting statistics about how long people watch video online.
We’ve always touted the message “shorter videos are better”. They tend to get straight to the point and hold attention better than a drawn-out message. We’ve certainly noticed measured improvements when tightening up our own marketing videos. But are longer videos inherently less engaging than shorter videos?
Sure enough, shorter videos do engage visitors better than long videos. But the interesting thing that found is that people do watch longer videos, at least about half way through.
So you can tell your story in two minutes and most interested people will watch 80% of the video. But you can also count on 50% of interested people watching at least half of a ten minute video. That’s another three minutes to tell your story.
My take on this is keep video on your home page as short as possible. Maybe treat them like a teaser. Put them on youtube.com and draw traffic to your site. But don’t hesitate to stream longer videos of maybe ten minutes if your product or service really needs that much time to tell the story and fully engage your visitor.
Either way, I always recommend testing videos of different lengths and see what works best for you.
Read the full story at Wistia.com
