Adding videos to your Squarespace website
Hello and happy Thursday! Affectionately known as Jr Friday around here, we’re having lots of fun as we round up another gorgeous summer week.
WELCOME BACK to Day 9 of the Live Video Training Extravaganza, we’re at it again with another week of free live video trainings and I am so excited to continue sharing this content with you!
Quick summary: every day last week, I hosted a free live video training over on my Youtube channel and shared those replays here on the blog. And honestly, it’s been so much fun that I wasn’t ready to stop quite yet… so I decided to continue these live video trainings into this week too! LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!
So we’re back for more and you can watch even more of these daily lessons as I keep creating content for you!
Today’s video was super fun, packed full of value and suggestions for you to incorporate into your own website. I Ioved sharing all these different video tips with you - I’m giving your real life examples of how you can try out different design options on your site, best practices, and even dropping knowledge bombs about video view counts and sneaky little factors. I can’t wait for you to watch the replay!
In this video training, I talked about adding videos to your Squarespace website.
From site-wide background videos to banner/header videos to regular ol’ videos on a web page or blog post, we cover it all!
This video training carries on from yesterday’s topic which was all about where to find photos and images to use on your website so if you haven’t already, be sure to check that one out too. No matter what type of visual content you’re after, I’ve got you covered!
Alright, that’s enough intro for one video… let’s get to the goods.
Click the live video training replay below to watch now!
Adding videos to your Squarespace website
Click play to watch the video above or on my Youtube channel
Here’s what we talked about in this video training:
Using videos on your Squarespace website
There are lots of different ways and places you can use videos on your Squarespace website:
video blocks
gallery blocks and gallery pages
project pages
cover pages
banners (supported on certain templates)
Hosting & Embedding your video
Squarespace does not allow you to host your video directly on your website. Instead, you must host your video on another platform and then EMBED the video onto your Squarespace website.
Options for Squarespace-supported video hosting include:
Youtube
Vimeo
Wistia
Animato
There are a few reasons for this: faster site load time, better sharing capabilities, and different hosting options to suit your needs & requirements for the video.
A few other things to keep in mind:
Squarespace only supports Background videos that are hosted on Youtube and Vimeo.
Only public videos (public and unlisted are OK but not private)
No 360 videos (like you see on Facebook or whatever)
Embedding videos onto web pages or blog posts
This is super easy to do, you simply insert a video content block and paste in the video’s URL.
Background Videos
Background videos are videos that sit behind page content, and they are often found or used on cover pages or site wide backgrounds (if the site isn’t long/don’t have to scroll).
Video banners or headers
These videos sits at the top of the page and auto-play in the background on loop without sound. This means that the site visitors doesn’t have to hit play for the video to start playing, and once the video finishes it simply starts over again and repeats.
You can also add text or button overlays to these video banners or headers (depending on the template).
One thing to keep in mind is that video banners may display as a static image on mobile, so be sure to check out the website preview of mobile or smaller sized devices.
Background videos on Index pages
If your template supports index pages, then background videos are a really great feature to incorporate into your page! You can control where the background video appears in the stacked index page list which means that you aren’t limited to the video only being at the top of the page or header section … instead, you can add the background video further down the page as you see fit. I love this customization and control.
Video play count
This is something that I learned pretty recently and I wanted to make sure that you know about this too!
Youtube does not count views of embedded videos (only counts the view if someone watches the video directly on Youtube) whereas Vimeo does count views form embedded videos.
Personally, I was confused by this because I have a bunch of blog posts and web pages that contain embedded Youtube videos, and I could tell that they were getting a lot of traffic… but for some reason, the view count was relatively low. I did some digging and realized that if someone watches the video directly on my blog post or web page, Youtube wasn’t counting that in the total view count…. they would only count it if the person clicked over to my Youtube channel and watched the video there.
The more you know!
Using videos strategically
Videos are a wonderful design choice for your website and they can go a long way to increase sales of your products and services. You’ll often see people including videos on their sales pages, either to show off their products or explain/demonstrate their services.
Videos are also also great for:
Testimonials
Event recaps
To increase the like/know/trust factor and create a more intimate relationship with your audience
FREE RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE VIDEO TRAINING:
DAILY VIDEOS FOR THE LIVE VIDEO TRAINING EXTRAVAGANZA
As I mentioned, this video is for Thursday, Day 9 and we’re continuing with another week of my Live Video Training Extravaganza! I’m PUMPED to be sharing so much free content, knowledge, information, strategies and tech tips with you for another week :)
I’ll be going live every day over on my Youtube channel again all week, sharing a free video training all about Squarespace, SEO, web design & development, online business, and a whole lot more.
We’re going to be talking about how you can grow your website, connect with your ideal audience online, attract dream clients and customers, and improve the look/feel/functionality of your website. Ready to up-level? PERFECT because my friend, you are in the right place and I’m sharing all my “secrets” to get you there.
I have a few topics in mind but I’d LOVE to hear from you!
If there’s anything you want me to talk about, any questions you want answered, any strategies you want me to debunk or explain, please let me know by leaving me a comment below. I’m open to suggestions because I want to make sure that these video trainings are super valuable and exactly what you’re dying to learn from me. So don’t be shy, consider this your invitation to pick my brain! I’ll be doing another Q&A video on Friday (that’s tomorrow).
See you back here tomorrow or over on my Youtube channel every day this week for even more of the Live Video Training Extravaganza! Thrilled that you’re here xoxo
