Are people clicking on your web site or blog videos, but only viewing them for a brief time before abandoning them? Or are they ignoring them altogether? If either of these applies to you, the first thing you should ask yourself is:
“Do my videos give my customers content that is unique and interesting? Is it valuable enough that they are willing to spend their precious time watching it?”
Compelling content that is targeted to your customer is important, even in online videos. Content is what increases the time people spend on your web site and decreases your bounce rate.
But if you are convinced your video content is first rate and people still aren’t sticking around to watch it, there could be several other factors playing into the mix.
It could be that your viewers are in situations where they either:
- Can’t turn up the volume
- Can’t hear or understand the audio
It makes perfect sense when you think about it. In public places such as an office, library, or coffee shop, and sometimes even in the privacy of their own homes, people are hesitant to turn up the volume because they don’t want to disturb those around them.
On the other end of the spectrum, people are often in loud situations and environments where they can’t hear the audio over the background noise.
There are also those who can’t hear what’s being said on videos due to hearing loss. Statistics show 36 million people in the United States alone suffer from hearing loss, with more than half of them under the age of 65. (It’s not just old folks, young people are affected, too).
If you’re thinking that there’s nothing you can do about this – that the situation is out of your control – you are wrong. There is one very simple solution that will solve all of these issues and that is:
Caption or subtitle your videos!
According to a trial done at PLYmedia, people will spend up to 40% more time watching videos that have captions or subtitles. The trial also showed that when captions or subtitles appeared in the video, 80% more people watched the video in its entirety compared to the same video without captions.
That tells us that captioning your videos is a powerful tool that works to keep people watching for a longer period of time. It knocks down barriers and eliminates excuses.
If that doesn’t completely convince you to caption your videos, than this might: It’s a good possibility that search engines will soon be able to index the text contained in videos. They can already index the text in Flash files, so the technology to index video files is very likely just a heartbeat away.
No matter how you look at it, stats like these simply cannot be ignored, in my humble opinion. There is a need out there that is waiting to be filled. I believe smart marketers will be quickly moving on this information and adding captioning to their videos. Will you be one of them?
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Since I plan to do some graphic videos this is helpful info to know about.
Is there a tool or service that you’d recommend for adding the subtitles? I’m doing simple screen captures and don’t know much about video editing.