Every year, the marketing industry calls the current year “year of video marketing”. People have been hyping videos since the early 2010s, and now, we’re here.
It’s hard not to consider video content if you’re trying to boost your traffic. It’s one of the most influential marketing tools online, and the return on investment is always solid.
Videos are so influential, 90% of users say it helps them make purchasing decisions. With internet speeds blazing right now, faster streaming is king. Is your website optimised to handle video content?
Some websites have slow streaming, so you need to cut on video buffering. Reducing streaming buffer from your side works. There are a few ways to do it for your website.
Video marketing changed the marketing landscape. This comes from the mobile user crowd. People who picked up their smartphones and tablets consume much video content.
In fact, more than 500 million users consume videos on Facebook per day. It’s a great way to keep users engaged with your platform.
The problem with this is that the demand for high-definition content grew as well. Embedding videos can slow streaming. If optimised with the right understanding, you can get faster streaming.
You should take into account, however, if you need videos at all in your pages. There are areas where you would not need to have videos at all. These will help you load your content faster.
Here’s how to make videos load faster with a few tweaks.
Before we touch anything on your webpage, we need to choose the right media formats. This is to prevent the problem of videos keep buffering.
This is where we can thank sites like Reddit and GfyCat. They popularised the use of high quality, small file size formats.
The great formats for short videos to prevent streaming buffer are .webm and .mp4.
The WebM format has full formatting ready for HTML5 videos. It also works with many of the common browsers in use for all platforms.
MP4 has different types of compression depending on the type of codec you use. Youtube and Vimeo like to use this video format due to its versatility. WebM is lighter on the size compared to MP4, but MP4 tends to have better quality without slow streaming.
If you want to learn how to make videos load faster, the process tends to revolve around two crucial factors. These are the video file compression and web page optimisation.
As a summary, you want to keep the video file size small. This is to reduce its impact on your page load times and reduce streaming buffer.
You would also want to optimise your web page. This is to perform proper embedding of your video content for faster streaming.
Before you upload your video content, use video compression tools. They can reduce the size of the video files without loss.
A small media file prevents your users to get “videos keep buffering” issues. Save users the frustration of slow streaming by using compression tools after render.
You need to, however, prevent sacrificing video quality. People see low-quality videos as unprofessional. This may stop people from enjoying your content.
480p is the ideal low value, which 720p being the gold standard.
You would want to reduce the resource sizes of your video before you even start rendering it for upload. Cutting down on the sizes of images, videos and audio before production requires less compression.
You would want to test the best quality settings for your needs.
In your code, it’s good to define the embed size that you plan on using for your video content. It’s good to specify the dimensions in your HTML and CSS to allow the browser to provide bandwidth to it.
You would also want to load your video last in your page loading. When other elements are loading, this can create streaming buffer.
Once the page loads, the video should start loading. It can provide a smoother user experience with faster streaming.
A good option for people who are looking into making video marketing their primary content is to use VPS for their hosting. VPS or virtual private server allows for you to host your website on a dedicated OS and dedicated specs.
Why is this good for you? VPS has distinct advantages.
It allows you to share your content without having to share your host resources with other users. This means you get full performance and provide dedicated service. This then translates to zero streaming buffer.
Most streaming sites use VPS for their sites at the very least. Many even use dedicated servers, but if you are starting, a VPS should be enough. A virtual private server can be scalable, depending on the hosting service.
Another great option is to use a CDN or content delivery network. It is one of the fool-proof ways on how to make videos load faster.
A content delivery network delivers content such as video streaming to its users. They provide quick and on-demand delivery of content, as needed by a user. The idea behind it is simple as well.
A CDN provides a part of the video upon request, rather than send the entire length of the video. A CDN can handle your media and prevent it from affecting the website handling your page. You also prevent excessive HTTPS requests.
Another option is cloud hosting, allowing your site to run within many clusters. This, however, is unpredictable, as your peak demand may coincide with the peak demand of others within your cloud network.
Mobile users take up the bulk of the people who are looking for faster streaming. They are also the ones who don’t like it when videos keep buffering. This is because mobile users expect extra portability and speed when using mobile platforms like smartphones and tablets.
You would want your videos, then, to make mobile users a priority. Creating a mobile-ready website through responsive design makes content adaptable.
Different screen sizes allow for different resolutions and aspect ratios. You would want your website to detect the device’s orientation for better size options.
Another great way to prevent slow streaming is removing some parts of the video data. This is to make the load time faster.
As an example, some videos do not use audio components for some reason. These can be anything from slideshows to carousel videos.
If this is the case, it’s better to strip audio data out of the video. This saves you both time and effort, creating a better way on how to make videos load faster.
For new businesses who can’t get a VPS server or even a CDN, an excellent way to cut down on the streaming buffer is to use fully-supported embed within streaming sites. Videos on Youtube and Vimeo are a good example of this.
Popular streaming sites are not only free, they also take care of most of the encoding for you. They will auto-adjust the video according to the data speed of the user.
If you want to have your large files hosted and don’t want to use Youtube or Vimeo, here’s an option. You can store them in the Amazon S3 Cloud Storage Cluster.
Your web hosting company plays a big part on how to make videos load faster. Why?
Depending on the hardware that your web host uses, you would want to have better service. SSD is always a solid option for people who want faster streaming of their server’s videos. You would also want to choose a service that is close to your location.
For European businesses, picking a server nearby like Ireland cuts on the latency.
Unless you’re using a CDN that spreads your content across the world, here’s the thing. You want your primary servers nearby. This will help you remove streaming buffer and provide content requests faster.
A server hosting from a nearby location is perfect for small to medium businesses who are targeting local customers. It is also ideal for brick and mortar companies who want to serve their videos to the locale.
Video is the future of internet marketing and there’s no stopping people from consuming this content. It keeps them engaged the most, so you need it for your business.
If you want to remove video buffering from your website, optimise your content. Crunch the video elements, set it in the code and get the right hosting server.
Are you looking for a web hosting service that can provide a solid VPS server and good hosting specs? Host.ie can do the job for you.
Get the best, most value for money hosting plans with a service that people trust. Contact us now at Host.ie and see everything we can offer you for superior video streaming for your platform.
