In yesterday's Traffic Tuesday post, we pointed out that creating Youtube videos is an excellent way to enhance your SEO success and to connect with your prospective clients. While this point is a given for many business owners, the finer points of making their videos valuable to users and effective in increasing conversion rates are not always so obvious, to the point that entire consultancies like Paul Bryan's Usography have been created. Bryan, who has been designing websites since 1995, offers some tips on how to optimize user experience or "UX."

I am continually emphasizing to my Los Angeles website design clients that their sites need to reflect a knowledge of who their targeted users are, as this determines how they will interact with menus, opt-in and contact forms, and videos. Bryan's firm, whose clients include Chick-Fil-A, Bloomingdales, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and others, conducted a study of 100 top retail sites this past year and used it as the base for a UX Audit, much like the feature checklist I apply to my own clients. It offers some excellent points to consider in terms of how your videos are presented.

Engage Your Viewers — E-commerce videos offer something that television commercials do not: the potential to inspire instant action in your users. They are much more likely to drag something into your shopping cart and buy it when the capability to do so is next to the video that just explained all the benefits of your product than they would if they saw a commercial on TV and were required to pick up the phone or go to your site. Keeping your video active will motivate activity in users.

Speaking of Benefits and Features... Don't be coy with positive details about your product or service, especially if they make it stand out against your competitors. To make them distinctly engaging, record actual people using and enjoying what you offer. Even if you sell apparel or shoes, a video showing a model move and walk in your products might address a user's questions about how they'll look and feel better than just an image.

User Experience is Not Universal— While you might be very savvy about various formats of media and how to share and view them, you shouldn't assume the same of your users. Employ the most standard, popular, and reliable setup, audio, and sharing capabilities. A stand-alone media player that just lets people click once to view is ideal, as redirecting them may lose their attention and interest.

Thanks for reading. Jason.
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