I’d like to give my website that little extra oomph to make it stand out from other websites. I’ve been playing with video recently and was wondering if I can use this to help enhance my website?

The simple answer is yes, video is a pretty powerful mechanism you can use to bolster the experience your user gets while using your website. The caveat here is that it needs to be done properly and tastefully. There’s nothing worse than jamming an unrelated video that is poorly made onto a website. Spending some time making sure you have a professional product can allow you to reap substantial rewards. Always keep your user in mind and what they are going to be using your website for.

One great example is Baby Earth a website that sells a variety of baby products, including clothing, nursery items and strollers. If you look at the strollers section and pick one of their products, for example, the Maclaren strollers you’ll see information about that particular product. Notice there’s a Video tab as part of the product description. Clicking on this brings up a video where Baby Earth staff talk through the different models available and what the differences between them are. As you can see, a video can be an extremely powerful tool for conveying a message and adds a certain amount of credibility to the website. A shopper may not be able to feel and test a product, but they can relate to people on the screen demonstrating what the product can do.

Another example is Lets Book Hotel, a website that lets you book hotels around Europe. Zooming into one of the hotels on offer, for example, the Preluna Hotel in Malta, you’ll see a video that gives you a tour of the hotel and the amenities it offers. Again, this is much more powerful than text or even pictures as it helps give you a feel of the location as well as telling you about it.

So, to recap: Go ahead, produce videos for your website, but make sure the quality is up to scratch and the videos are used where they can product maximum benefit, right at the point where you want to impress a visitor to your website.