How to embed videos on your website
In a previous post, I explained that putting video content on YouTube makes it harder for viewers to learn more about you, donate, or take any other action after watching.
Following up on this, I’d like to offer some practical advice about what you can do instead. If you’re supposed to be avoiding YouTube, what’s the alternative?
Choosing where to post
Like I described last time, the best place to send viewers to watch your videos is your organization’s own website.
But where specifically on that website do videos belong?
I go into more depth about this topic here, but generally speaking, I tend to steer clients away from overly broad “media pages” and towards pages with specific goals. If you emailed the video as part of a fundraising drive, post it on a page about that drive. If you emailed it as part of an update about your activities, post it where viewers can learn more about your current projects.
To put this another way, consider what actions you want people to take when the video is over, and make sure those actions are immediately and conveniently available to them.
Choosing where to host
In order to post the video on your website, you’ll first need to upload and store it, i.e., “host” it, somewhere else online.
It is possible to host your videos yourself, but it’s expensive, difficult, and it doesn’t come with any particular benefits. Using a video hosting website is easier and cheaper all around.
You’re already familiar with one of the most popular video hosting websites: YouTube. Yes, you could theoretically still host your videos on YouTube, but post them on your own website and send viewers a link to that page rather than to YouTube itself.
But as I explained last time, YouTube, while free and very user-friendly, isn’t great for this purpose. No matter what you do, viewers who share your videos with their friends might end up sending them to the YouTube page instead of the website page; YouTube doesn’t offer any way to make videos only viewable off YouTube, and their “share” options tend to direct traffic back to YouTube itself.
Even if people do largely watch the video on your site, don’t forget that recommendations for other videos always pop up at the end of YouTube videos. As I’ve said before, this is a big disruption and a risk to your interactions with donors or prospects.
On the other hand, there are paid video hosting websites that don’t have these problems. Two of the more well-known ones are Vimeo and Wistia.
Personally, I prefer Vimeo. It has fewer advanced features, but it’s much less expensive and offers all the functionality you really need. Just upload the video and check the “don’t play on vimeo.com” option. You can even set it to play only on your website, so you can be absolutely sure that your site is the only place your videos are being seen.
Last steps
When you upload the video, give it a title that describes exactly what it is and how it’s being used. (In my next post about using video on your website, I’ll explain why you might actually want to upload multiple versions of the video to use on different site pages, and why it’s important to make sure to clearly label which is which.)
Once that’s taken care of, click the “embed” button and give the link to your developer. They can use this code to post the video on your website. They may ask you for the video URL as well.
You can also consult with your developer about what kinds of visual and textual framing would be most effective for helping the video achieve its goals. If you’d like some pointers to get the conversation started, feel free to check out my helpful tips here.
I hope this post has helped demystify the whole video embedding process. Still have questions? Comment below!