Usability Issues of Adding Video to a Website

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Using video in a website is a whole issue, there are several usability problems we have to take care of at the moment of designing a website. I would like to tell you about a website I launched recently: it’s the Biccu Table website, dedicated to the presentation of a table design.

The Biccu Table website needed to be very graphical inorder to easily explain how the concept works and what is the table for (it’s a table for children). So we went for a video, making it the center of the website. Of course this brought some problems to the design…

 

The Biccu Table Website Screenshot

 

Technical Issues

We got a few messages from users (actually 2) saying that they were not able to see the video. One thought that an Apple computer was needed and the other one said that the computer crashed several times during playing time. In our case this was a minimum amount of complaints in comparison to the big amount of positive feedback. But this is a warning, if you are targeting poorly technically-skilled users, keep in mind that playing video represent a challenge for some of them.

 

The Text

Every video, specially the ones with sound, should have an explanatory text giving information to the people that are not able to see the video (for example, visually impaired ones or for technical reasons). In our case, we noticed that the people were concentrated on the video only. Was that the desired effect? Great! For us, this was fine as the images were clear enough.

 

Too Long is Boring

Initially the videos we placed on the website were longer. We noticed that users were excited at the beginning but bored at the end. So, keep videos short.

 

Embedded Third Party Videos

Video players like the YouTube one are very popular and using them might improve usability, most users know how to use them. For us it was not an option, we wanted to have videos without ads, without external links and without any external branding.

  • http://www.gljakal.com/protoaspx/ Loris

    I think using Quicktime for video embedding is just wrong.
    I, for example, do not have the quicktime player installed. And I won’t ever install it on my pc no matter how good your video could be.
    I browse artists portfolios all the time and do you know what I do when one of them has only quicktime videos? I skip the website altogether. I don’t bother sending emails to the website owner, I have little time and a n even smaller attention span. I still have another 1000+ portfolios to visit!

    The biggest problem with your biccu table website, however, is that with exception of the quicktime video (that I can’t see), there is no other graphical representation of how the table would look like. How are you going to convince me that your product is special? With the text on the left? (users don’t read text)
    Would I put it in my house? Would it look nice on my carpet? I can’t say.

    Sorry, I usually enjoy (and agree to) your blog posts, but this “tip” feels just wrong to me.

    p.s. For an example of flash embedded in a website, see World of Goo’s page at
    http://2dboy.com/games.php
    An unobtrusive flash video player was used, and it was also beautifully integrated with the website!

  • http://www.alexisbrion.eu Alexis Brion

    Hi Loris,

    Thank you so much for your valuable comment. You make a point there and I know more people could have a similar opinion about videos. In our case, we somehow “accepted” these limitations from the beggenning of the design.

    Thanks a lot!

    Alex