Mobile Optimization for Videos: Why You Should Do It and How?

Today’s era is largely defined by mobile culture. Internet users are using their good-old desktops less and switching more towards their smartphones and other handheld devices. But it’s not that any type of content that’s ruling the digital world these days. It’s more of videos that people look for on their devices.

Close to 68 percent of people favor learning about a new product or service by watching a short video. Also, internet users watch 6 hours and 48 minutes of online video per week. About 87 percent of marketers leverage video content as their go-to marketing tool (Source). Why shouldn’t they? Video marketers see 66 percent more qualified leads flowing in per year.

When it comes to mobile videos, forecast numbers are truly staggering. Globally, smartphone video viewers are believed to increase from 1.68 billion in 2019 to 2.22 billion in 2023, which marks a CAGR of 7.2 percent. At the same time, 2.72 billion people are estimated to watch video content on their mobile devices in 2023, which is a whopping increase from 2019’s figure of 2.16 billion (Source).

As such, it’s become extremely important for brand marketers to optimize their video content for mobile devices. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Boost user engagement

The power of video content is seen in the way they engage website visitors. They tend to keep visitors longer on a website. Also, video content boosts the memorability of a brand because viewers tend to retain a message more when they get it from a video.

2. Determine purchase decisions

Believe it or not, 8 out of 10 users purchased an app or piece of software after they watched a video from the brand. As such, video content can influence people to make a purchase. It acts no less than a shopping list that people use to make a purchase. It gives them more information and boosts their confidence in a brand.

3. Increases internet traffic

Cisco estimates that 82 percent of the worldwide online traffic will come from video streaming and video downloads by 2022. Also, traffic from live online videos will increase nearly 15-fold and account for about 17 percent of the total share of online video traffic by 2022 (Source).

How to optimize video content for mobile devices?

So far, you may have got a fair idea of how important it is to include mobile videos in a brand’s digital marketing strategy. The question that arises now is how to optimize video content for a mobile-first world. Here are a few ways to do so:

1. Optimize the video player for mobile devices

Just like a website needs to be responsive, videos on that website should be responsive too. One of the most crucial things to tackle in this respect is having a responsive video player. You need to ensure that your video content looks appealing, irrespective of the device the user is using. So, when it comes to optimizing your video player mobile, it should match the size of the device’s screen properly and perfectly. All major video hosting sites—be it YouTube, Vidyard, or Wistia—tend to adjust the video for smartphone viewing automatically. However, despite this, you should take some time out to check how your video content appears on different mobile screens.

2. Create a brief video

You should know that mobile video viewers are always on the go. They don’t like to waste time. As such, they look for videos that are short, swift, entertaining, informative, and, not to forget, shareable. Therefore, try to meet this need of theirs by creating a short, sweet, and engaging video.  Take the example of an explainer video. It is recommended that such videos are of 90 seconds duration. However, for mobile devices, you should keep the length of the video at 30 or 60 seconds.

3. Ensure a good loading speed

Albeit mobile video viewers seem slightly more patient than desktop viewers, they are still anxious to some extent.  When creating a mobile video, you should always check its quality settings. Try to reduce the size of the images, audio, and animations without compromising its overall quality. By doing so, there will be no need to compress your video. When it comes to loading time, you should consider using proper analytics—something that is often provided by the video hosting site analytics. This will help you check the overall performance of your video.

4. Keep thumbnails in mind

Your video should grab the attention of your viewers. For this, you need to create appealing thumbnails. Nonetheless, just like a video thumbnail should be capable of grabbing eyeballs, it should also be able to be informative, meaning it should show something that the video contains. Just make sure you create this without compromising the impact and quality of your video content. Run some tests and ensure that the video thumbnail is compelling enough.

5. Don’t forget the call to action (CTA)

Call-to-action buttons are something no video marketer creating content for mobile devices should overlook. These are great and important additions to your videos. But for mobile videos, buttons, and annotations themselves often don’t work. Hence, you should consider including a call to action in the video content itself. It can be a verbal or textual one. Just make sure you have it to lead your viewers to your website or any particular landing page.

6. Make captions readable

Captions are subtitles of your videos. The verbal dialog and sound effects of the soundtrack are shown on the mobile screen as the video plays. Captions are important elements for visually enacting everything that is said in your video. Besides, they enable your viewers to better remember multimedia content. However, the challenge here lies in finding the perfect balance between readable texts, animations, and a compelling story script for your video. If you can master this, you are sure to maintain the attention of your viewers till the end of the video.

7. Always test your videos

Lastly, you should always test your videos to make sure they are optimized for mobile. It is easier than you think: just view your website and its videos on a mobile device and see how everything looks. If the text of the video is hard to read, or any other issues crop up, you can change your strategy to ensure that all of your videos in the future appeal to your viewers, irrespective of the type of device they are using.