If you’re a web designer or blogger, it’s important to keep your website up to date. Regularly applying a “fresh cost of paint” and using the latest web design trends is crucial to looking professional and authoritative.
Nobody is going to listen to what you have to say if your website still looks like this:
Great stock photos are nice and all, but video backgrounds are all the rage these days.
Now that the average internet speed can handle larger and more bandwidth-demanding websites, web designers are looking for more ways to incorporate video into their websites.
Video backgrounds, in particular, are becoming increasingly popular.
Here’s a brief clip of one I used on a website I built for a client:
Video is powerful, engaging, easier to produce, and more affordable than ever before.
You can purchase a wide variety of stock video to place into your websites, blogs, and video productions. Or, if you’re like me, you can get it for free by building a website with Weebly. (one of the the best website builders on the planet, in case you didn’t know)
If you’re looking for cheap stock videos, here are the best places to find it.
11 Places to Find Affordable Stock Videos
- Videoblocks.com
- Mazwai.com
- Storyandheart.com
- Wedistill.io
- Broll.io
- Videvo.net
- Lifeofvids.com
- Stockfootageforfree.com
- Xstockvideo.com
- Clipcanvas.com/free-footage
- Beachfrontbroll.com
Some things to keep in mind when using video backgrounds in your websites:
Don’t overdo it
Videos are much larger than images. Your site will load a lot slower if you use them too much.
This will affect the user experience of your site, thereby damaging your search engine rankings. Google will often punish sites with slow load times.
Optimize the size of the video
When you download a stock video, make sure it’s been optimized for web use.
You can tell the seller what you’re using it for, and ask them if the size of the video has been compressed for web use. They usually are, but it never hurts to be too careful!
Make sure it actually improves the user experience
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” – Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park
Sometimes web designers can get so caught up in adding “cool” features, they don’t stop to think about whether they actually add to the user experience.
The last thing you want to do is distract from the main content of the website.
Got any examples of websites you love that use video wisely? Let me know in the comments!
