Love watching videos on the web? I do, simply because it can be entertaining, relaxing or even when I don’t feel like reading a bunch of copy and there are videos on the website that sum up all the information that I can just play and listen to.
The usage of embedding videos has become one of the most popular elements in the modern web design world. More resources are becoming available for people to embed their videos, such as HTML5, Youtube, Vimeo or SublimeVideo, to name a few. However, when you move on to mobile devices, it can be a different story. So before you start to throw all your videos onto your mobile site, here are a couple things to consider.
Formatting your videos
Don’t simply make your video in one single format because it may not work across all mobile devices. We suggest having alternative formats embedded in your code as well (.m4v, .webm, .ogv, .mp4 and etc.). This also applies if you are embedding videos on the desktop site.
On the other hand, uploading your video to Youtube and using their resources to embed your videos is a popular solution as well, that way you don’t need to worry about formatting as much and almost all modern mobile devices will support it.
Video sizes
People hate to wait for videos to load. You obviously don’t want your users to be waiting too long for buffering. The larger the video file you have, the more time it’s going to take to buffer. Consider making your videos shorter and to the point so that the size of the files will not hinder people’s viewing experience.
Also, keep in mind that not everyone is using the 4G network. Users who are still under the 3G network, might still suffer from streaming a long video.
The worst case scenario for users who don’t have an unlimited data plan, or their internet speeds aren’t fast enough to stream the video is that they may not be able to play your video at all. Streaming on a phone, as you may have discovered, can use a large amount of data.
Therefore, it’s always nice to have an alternative way to display your information rather than only relying on the video, such as transcribing the video into text and pasting it below the video. We recommend researching to find out what is best for you.
