Making Embedded Videos Count

Our clients know that to maximize the potential of their business they need a well designed, responsive website with engaging content. They also know that video content can often tell a captivating story where plain text might just fall flat. As a result, we here at Stellar Blue have a lot of experience including video content in websites in many contexts. In this age of mobile devices, multimedia content, and interactive websites, it can be tempting to ask for a video that plays automatically when a page loads or when a particular user interaction occurs but that isn’t always the right thing to do.

If your video content is being served via multiple channels from a video sharing site like Vimeo or YouTube, you need to consider a view counts. Is it important to you that the view count is incremented on the streaming service site when a user watches your embedded video? If you depend on the video sharing site as a revenue stream or utilize the analytics data they provide, then it should be!

The issue is these types of service providers are careful to try and validate all video views to prevent fraud so they often require that a user clicks directly on the embedded video player or else a view is not recorded. That means automatically playing videos or playing a video in response to other interactions on the site can be a bad idea. In these cases, you need to embed your video according to the provider’s documentation.

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to choose between a seamless multimedia user experience and great analytics? We couldn’t agree more! A great user experience is not the result of creating user interactions based on a third party’s analytics requirements. It comes from putting UX above your other concerns. You can get your users to watch a video without needing to take up a bunch of screen real estate with a preloaded player or requiring another click once the player loads – all without sacrificing the power of data collection. Instead of depending on the streaming service’s analytics, take advantage of something like our Stellar Analytics to track actions like video views regardless of how or when the player is triggered to start or stop.

In summary, if after careful consideration you do need to use a streaming service that requires a particular interaction, take care to follow the documentation carefully. On the other hand, after weighing your needs against the available options, it may turn out that you don’t actually need to rely on a third party’s ability to track view counts.

Still have questions? The Stellar Blue team is happy to help! Contact us to find out more.