How to Optimize Videos for Your B2B Industrial Website

Video content is increasingly critical for B2B industrial marketers, as it plays a key role in engaging prospects, showcasing complex products, and enhancing the overall user experience. However, without proper optimization, videos can significantly impact your website’s performance, slowing down load times and frustrating users.

This guide will walk you through the essential steps to optimize videos for the web, ensuring faster load times, improved accessibility, and enhanced site performance. Whether you’re embedding videos on your product pages or utilizing background videos, these best practices will help you maximize the impact of your video content while maintaining a seamless user experience.

Best Practices: Video Optimization Guide for Industrial Websites

1. Leverage a Video Hosting Service

For most use cases, it’s best to use a third-party service like YouTube or Vimeo for video hosting rather than self-hosting. These platforms handle critical aspects of optimization, including file formatting and streaming quality, which ensures better performance and minimizes the negative impact on your site speed. Windmill Strategy recommends this approach for all videos within page content, as it significantly reduces server load and enhances site performance.

Need guidance on selecting the right platform? Check out our guide on choosing the best video hosting service for industrial marketers.

For background videos, consider uploading directly to your site’s media library and utilizing tools like the cover block or video embed block. Note: Always optimize videos before uploading to avoid performance hits.

2. Optimize Background Videos in WordPress

Background videos can be visually striking, but they must be optimized to prevent slowing down your site. Follow these guidelines:

• Remove the audio: Background videos should be visually focused without audio.
• Shorten the duration: Keep the video under 20 seconds to minimize file size.
• Avoid looping indefinitely: Endless loops can unnecessarily increase resource use.
• Remove text overlays: Any critical messaging should be outside the video for clarity.
• Use appropriate formats: MP4 (with H.264 codec), WebM, or MOV are recommended, with MP4 often providing the best balance of quality and file size.
• Limit file size: Aim for video sizes between 5-10MB to ensure quick load times.
• Adjust resolution: Keep the resolution below 1080p to maintain performance without sacrificing quality.
• Prefer landscape orientation: For full-width background videos, landscape orientation works best.

Use online tools like Veed.io, Clideo, or FreeConvert, or desktop tools like Handbrake, to ensure your videos are properly optimized before uploading.

3. Make Your Videos Accessible

Accessibility is critical. Ensure that all videos are transcribed and include captions or subtitles. These can be added either through your video hosting service or directly on the page beneath the video embed. This not only makes your content accessible to those with hearing impairments or who have their sound turned off, but also improves overall user engagement and SEO.

4. Enable Lazy Loading for Videos

Lazy loading ensures that video content on your site only loads when a user scrolls to the point where it’s visible. This technique prevents unnecessary loading and can significantly improve page speed. Windmill Strategy uses WP Rocket to implement lazy loading on websites, optimizing both user experience and performance.

The Benefits of Optimizing Videos for Your Website

• Improved Load Times & Bandwidth Efficiency: Optimized videos reduce file size, leading to faster load times, which prevents potential slowdowns and keeps users engaged.
• Enhanced User Experience: Faster, high-quality videos make your website more engaging, increasing the likelihood of conversions.
• SEO Benefits: Search engines favor faster websites, and optimized videos can contribute to improved rankings.
• Mobile Responsiveness: Properly optimized videos ensure that your content is accessible and performs well on mobile devices, crucial for today’s on-the-go decision-makers.
• Increased Accessibility: Adding captions and subtitles makes your videos accessible to a broader audience, including those with hearing impairments, and can also boost engagement.

Looking to Further Enhance Your Website’s Performance?

Explore our comprehensive B2B website checklist to ensure your site is fully optimized for speed, accessibility, and user experience.