Auto Play Videos A.K.A. Auto Play Ads - A Conversion Tool Or a Source of Frustration? Auto play video is always going to find you. Marketers are using this new feature to advertise themselves on the internet, but this new trend has however frustrated millions of users already. Websites think pushing visitors to watch your videos will keep them engaged, but is it so? Several times, I ask my self, is forcing visitors to watch my videos on my site is a good idea? The visitors who are already on my site with their predefined motive will never answer positively to any question I ask them forcibly. Non of them have any personal attachment to me and my site. They are just here to complete their motive and will finally leave once their purpose is finished. This is a general behavior of any visitor who visits any site on the internet. Auto play videos were included in the campaigns by the marketing professionals to act as an engaging component on their sites or any other sites on the internet. But people have started to look it as a serious tool of distraction that distracts them from their ultimate goal for visiting a site. Millions of posts and queries are already flooding all over the internet to find out the ways to stop these auto play videos. Even some heat mapping tools have reported that inclusion of auto-play videos on the sites has significantly affected the conversion rates, and these effects are not positive that I can assure. Here is an example of a Google's search results full of the posts and articles speaking evil about the auto-play ads/videos. Auto play is an interruption to browsingThe best and an intrusive way for someone who is listening to music or watching a video is they are allowed to do so in peace and without an interruption. The worst is the case when an auto play video pops up with something that was not even asked for. It is quite an interruption to the peaceful experience and no body is going to like it. It crosses the limit of frustration when I am reading a blog post, and I am completely into it. The worst of all the cases is that an auto play video sound comes out of know where and suddenly everybody in my office starts to think I was passing time on the internet. There are many such user stories and heat-mapping data flooding over the internet which advocates the slogan " Auto play Ads are evil." Several heat mappings and A/B testing data have proved that moving contents are one of the best ways to attract the attention of the visitors. A similar case can be seen with the fact that these attracting contents can also work as the distracting contents if they are not
desired by the visitors.
Take some advice if you still want to use Auto play1. Use auto plays in the case of the links where visitors expect to see some videos. Do not pop them from nowhere. 2. If the clip is long enough, you must provide the user with the option to stop, pause or skip the content. 3. Mute the video until the user clicks or taps on it. 4. Pause the video when a user scrolls past the video section and moves below the fold on the page as the Instagram and Facebook apps do. 5. Make it short enough to provide the message in the least time. The user will not see your videos if they are lengthy and not interesting. 6. Try to attach your videos with some relevant short text contents if you are using them on your website. I don't say that Auto play is a bad idea. In fact, it is a great tool if you can use it in some productive way to provide information, not as a tool of distraction. Auto play is good until it does not frustrate your visitors. Keeping the above practices in your sense might help you to use this tool for good without affecting your current conversion rates.