Slideshows are dead, long live the fullscreen video.
Horizontal sliders suck, videos however don’t.
At the beginning of time, in 2011, every website had a big image slider at the top of their homepage. You can still se them on almost every website for small and medium sized companies.
Then everyone realized they suck. Conversion rate for any slide except the first one is close to zero. The users see the 1st slide but not the others, so a lot of time is spent on slides that no one will ever see. A lot of people wrote articles (here’s one, another one, a third one) on why they were bad, including me. So, a while back they got replaced by fullscreen images instead. One big image with one big message.
However, ordinary people (that is non-designers) love when things move. Put on a photo slideshow on the computer at your parents house and they will sit there watching for hours. So, however great the well designed static top images were, no matter how much higher the conversion was compared to the slideshow, people weren’t happy. Things didn’t move.
Enter full screen background videos. It’s quickly becoming the big thing on websites now (arguably it already is, the web is swarming with them already) and that’s a good thing. Here, I list three examples of how it’s used throughout the web and reason on why it’s great.
Sketchin
The Sketchin website gives you a logo, a navigation menu, a selling headline and a video at the top of their page. It took me about 20 seconds before I even noticed anything but the video of the app “Dreamboard” being used. I immedeatly know that the app looks good and is easy to use, that makes me want to read more and ultimately download the app.
Amore and Sorvete
http://www.amoreandsorvete.com/
An e-commerce site that sell swim wear for women. Allthough, I don’t need to tell you this because the video on the first page tells you that. Without a single word. Not only are language barriers broken here, but you also get a very good impression of the brand. The girl is happy, then I am happy. Also, the clothes look good.
Whiteboard
When you are looking for the latest web trends, always visit the Whiteboard website first. You instantly see that this is a great agency that do everything you want from an agency. The guys have beards and wear hats inside, they write on whiteboards and use macs. The video here is to show how Whiteboard works, what they do and who they are. Tell me, how much do you want to hire Whiteboard after visiting their? Shut up and take my money, I say.
Fullscreen video, problem?
As always, no solution is great for all. People with old browsers and low bandwidth will not enjoy these websites, but nor will they enjoy anything great on the web. If we build things for the people who have it worse, then no progress will ever be made. Try to detect old browsers and slow speeds and fall back to a static image with a simple copy. Might be worse that what you had before for them, but it’s worth it.
Same thing with mobile. This doesn’t work there for the same reasons as above. So, don’t do this feature on any page but your most important page. Be it the homepage or the product page. Don’t rely on the video to heavy, but add a line of text above it explaining what you do, or what you sell.
All in all, this is very nice
Having an embedded YouTube-video on your homepage is not a good thing. It requires the user to first click, then wait for the buffer, and then spend up to 2 minutes watching your video. That’s asking a lot of first time visitors, and basically no one will do it.
Showing the video in the background however, requires nothing of the user while still conveing the exact same message to them. You can even have sound on it, like Spotify has, but if it’s needed then you probably should rethink your video approach.
This thing looks great but is not merely a cool feature. If done right, the video can show the users in seconds what would require a long text to tell. What you need 5 slides to say about your company, or your product, you only need one video for. If you loop it in the background it unobtrusive but your users will see it. That makes conversion higher as the users will see more of what you are trying to show them. I for one welcome the new design standard of fullscreen videos looping in the background.
If an image says a thousand words then surely a video says millions.
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