6 Tips for Optimising Website Videos

Videos are a business’s best friend because they deliver a lot of information in a short space of time, and they’re the most-viewed type of content on the internet because watching is easier than reading. Although videos are fantastic, they take up a lot of server space, which can slow down a website so much that it drives visitors away. Therefore, to place videos on a website and have fast loading speeds, they need to be properly optimised.

Video Compressing

Videos take up more storage than any other content type, which is why they need compressing before you upload them. By compressing the videos, you’re making smaller file sizes that will help keep your website speed up. There are countless tools online for compressing, but Handbrake offers an extensive tool completely free of charge because it’s open source.  

Choosing the Correct Format

Web videos need to be HTML5-compatible, which allows you to place them on your website without extra plugins taking up space. Typically, MPEG-4 is the correct format because it supports all browsers, but you can use WebM if you’re only concerned about Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. If you have a video in the wrong format, there are plenty of online tools that will let you convert them into the correct format.

Edit Your Videos Properly

When you shoot a video, there will likely be parts you need to cut to avoid having a messy video taking up unnecessary storage. To do this, you can easily use a crop video tool, which will allow you to trim sections of the video and even reduce the frame size to eliminate large backgrounds and bring the focus content to the forefront.

Correctly Set Up Preloading and Autoplay

If your video is set to autoplay, it will guzzle up bandwidth and lead to sluggish loading speeds. Therefore, you should spend time making sure autoplay is only used when it 100% has to be. As well as this, you should consider preloading, which can have a positive impact on your overall website’s speed. To find out about additional video loading techniques, read this article on lazy loading.

Accurately Specify Parameters

If you don’t tell your website what size to launch your video, you may end up with an output that doesn’t quite fit your needs. Therefore, you need to input the width and height beforehand, which will allow the website to allocate the required space prior to loading. If you do this successfully, you will avoid cumulative layout shift (CLS).

Try Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN spreads your website content around geographically spaced servers, which means visitors receive content from a closer location. As you may have guessed, with less distance for data to travel, the faster your website will be. In particular, your videos will load with fewer buffer issues.

Videos win the race when it comes to web content effectiveness, but they need to be optimised and uploaded correctly to avoid bringing down the page speed. Although this article isn’t extensive, you will find these strategies will make a significant impact.

Article by Pankaj Shah: DCP London Web Designers