How to Add Videos to Your Squarespace Website
Videos have the power to bring websites to life. Using Squarespace’s video blocks, you can add engaging video content to any page of a version 7.1 website. Squarespace’s new drag-and-drop editor, Fluid Engine, unlocks new creativity for visual storytelling by enabling you and your clients to place engaging video content in unique ways throughout websites.
Benefits of video content
Before getting started, it’s important to understand the benefits of adding video content to your client’s website. Videos are an expressive medium to effectively convey your client’s brand and grab their target audience’s attention. Video content adds personality to your client’s website, and, when applicable, can have a positive impact on purchase decisions.
Videos are an essential driver for building audiences online. Depending on your client’s goals, using video for marketing helps bring motivated customers to your client’s website and prompts more engagement than text-based content alone. From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, an embedded video can improve your client’s organic page ranking on search engines (i.e. where their website appears in the search results), increasing the opportunity for people to discover the website through search.
Best practices
Videos are an extension of your client’s brand experience. They’re a valuable way to connect with customers online and should ultimately reflect your client’s goals–whether that’s introducing a business, promoting a product or service, or training and educating their audience.
If your client decides to add video content to their website, it’s important they consider the following:
The purpose of the video
Based on your client’s goals, video content should have a clear purpose in their marketing strategy as well as a call-to-action for viewers. If your client is a therapist whose goal is to book new patients, they’ll want to make a video that shows their personality and relevant skill set to prompt viewers to book an appointment. Or, if your client is a shop owner wanting to highlight new merchandise, they should create a video showcasing a product in use and point to where customers can make purchases.
The video’s story
As your client establishes the concept of their video, they’ll want to use storytelling to connect with their target audience. Customers are more likely to spend money with businesses that they feel emotionally connected to.
Additionally, the video’s message should be simple and straightforward. Regardless of the video’s length, the audience should walk away feeling informed but not overwhelmed with details.
If your client is featured in the video, they should appear approachable and personable. Likewise, if they are voicing over the video, they should speak in an easygoing manner that conveys their passion and resonates with viewers.
The audio and video setup
While your client does not need an expensive camera to make a video, it’s important they have a good lighting setup to ensure the video appears as high quality as possible. With the help of a decent microphone and a smartphone, they’ll have everything they need to film a quality video. Depending on your client’s business, they may also find it worthwhile to invest in a reliable screen recording software to capture on-screen demonstrations.
The video’s accessibility
Ensure videos can play with or without sound and closed captions are available. You can take things a step further by providing a transcript of the video that includes everything spoken in the video as well as any on-screen actions. You can also supplement the video with an audio description that explains what is happening on screen.
How to use video blocks
Adding videos to your client’s website is simple with video blocks. To add a single video to a page of your client’s website, use a video block to upload the content directly from your files or add a link to a video hosted on YouTube or Vimeo. You can use video blocks to embed a video to a specific page, such as a blog post or landing page.
Watch this video for a step-by-step tutorial on using video blocks:
Pro tip: Over time, your client may decide to monetize their content by gating their videos. Squarespace Member Sites enables you to create a members-only page of your client’s website that requires visitors to be subscribed in order to access.
Learn more about Member Sites and how to set up the feature for your client.
Want more?
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