Video is an increasingly popular medium found on websites these days. Everything from the traditional “welcome” video, to video-blogs, to webinars and video infomercials can be used for providing information to your website visitors beyond typical text-based content.
While video content can be a great addition to your website, video (and audio) that begin playing without the user deliberately hitting the “play” button can be a huge turnoff to your site visitors.
Most business owners want their video to start automatically to make sure it gets seen. It’s understandable; you’ve invested a fair amount of resources to create your fabulous video so you definitely want everyone to see it. Unfortunately, setting your video to autoplay actually does the exact opposite of what you want, causing most users to leave your site entirely rather than simply stopping the video.
Turn off video autoplay and let your site visitor decide what content to read or watch. You’ll find you have a much more engaged and receptive audience than if you try to “make” them watch your video.
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Deborah Z. Lee
Turning off autoplay also gives the viewer time to turn on the sound! A lot of times I’ve found that videos start automatically but when I turn on my speakers there is no sound coming through because the sound has to begin when the video starts, apparently.
BRANDgfx
Excellent point Deborah! It’s all about ensuring a website visitor’s experience is the best it can be, and having issues with sound not working would certainly frustrate many visitors. Thanks for sharing!