Like many things in the world, the Covid-19 pandemic fundamentally changed the way we interact with things in our daily lives. Videos are no exception. Unlike other aspects of life, however, the impact on video consumption and interaction was a positive change. People became much more likely to interact with videos and video content since the stay-at-home lifestyle took over, so much so that they’re even expecting videos to be incorporated into a majority of their online content. This makes adding video to your property website an essential task to improving user experience and engagement.
So–how exactly do you do that?
Incorporating videos to increase user experience can be a deceptively complicated task. On the surface, it’s simply adding in a video to mix with the other text based content on your website. Realistically, however, there is far more to consider. Things such as, where should the video be placed? How long should it be? Should it play automatically when loading the page or should it be clickable? What should the video include? And so on.
Videos have a lot of potential for impact on user experience within a property website. Due to their strong immersive nature and storytelling ability, they serve as an instant and effective way to set the atmosphere of your property and seamlessly convey it to prospective residents. Placing a full screen video on the landing page of your floor plans, for example, is a perfect opportunity to set the scene and outline the feel of your apartment units. Video also offers immersive storytelling, something you can utilize within your property website to pull prospective residents in and become emotionally invested in what your community can offer them in a future home.
Video can also highlight specific amenities that need more than just words to demonstrate their positive features to a resident. Having a video reiterate the amazing descriptions of what you have to offer is a huge boost to both user experience and interest in your property. Remember to always place the video directly by the content it relates to, so the user intuitively explores the information in a seamless flow. Placing a standalone video at the very top of the page, before the user dives into the text based content below, is another great tactic that yields high interaction rates. It is a great place to showcase some of the most important amenities and features that the user will encounter later on in the page.
Keep in mind to let the user have full control over the video interaction. Ensure that your video has features such as auto mute, controllable volume, play and pause buttons and a time skipping slider. It is much more likely that prospective residents will have a better experience with your videos when they feel like they have full control over what they are choosing to interact with.
Seems pretty easy, right? There are some pitfalls to avoid when adding video to enhance your user experience, however. Placement of a video has a very large impact on the rate of its interaction. Never place your video on the side columns of your website. This placement is where most ads on the internet occupy, meaning your video will often get overlooked without the user even realizing. Another frequently overlooked placement to avoid is at the very bottom of the page. Once your prospective or current resident has made it to the bottom of the page, odds are, they’ve gathered all the information they deem is necessary and aren’t very likely to interact with a video that would potentially provide even more information. It’s best to work a video into areas where the user is still open to taking in all the details about what your apartment community has to offer. Lastly, it’s important to remember that even though interest in video content has skyrocketed in the past year, there are still those out there that would prefer to gather their information through text. It’s essential when adding video content to ensure the information covered within it remains optional and can also be gained through reading the text from the page itself. Never force someone to interact with your videos, let them choose to do so!
The rise in interest in online video content, although recent, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Adding videos into your property website is an essential step in boosting user experience, engagement and overall interest in your property.
