How to Wow Your Website Visitors with a Video Background in 2024

Let’s start off with something simple…

Before reading this, I can guarantee that your attention was drawn instantly to the video above. When there’s a moving image (or video), it’s hard to ignore.

This is why it’s a brilliant option to wow your website visitors with a video background. Our subconscious will always be drawn to something moving, versus something that’s still.

If you want to grab your website visitor’s attention or draw them to something, in particular, video (when used in the correct way), can be a lifesaver.

Let’s take a look at a few video marketing statistics that might tempt you to invest in this idea:

• 95% of video marketers plan to increase video spend
• 89% of video marketers say video promotes a good return on investment (ROI)
• 87% of video marketers say video has increased their website traffic
• 80% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales

These kinds of figures are hard to ignore. FoodBloggerPro says that website owners saw a 138% increase in conversions when using a video background on their homepage.

Whilst I can’t guarantee that your website conversions will reach this, even the smallest improvement can help. It’s all about using video backgrounds the right way.

Simply adding a video background to your homepage won’t increase conversions or traffic. You need to know what you are doing in order to achieve great results. That’s why we’ve put this guide together.

Let’s start exploring these options in order to wow your website visitors today…

1. How to use video backgrounds the right way on your website

As I mentioned earlier, it’s not just a case of adding a video background to your website and being done with it. Whilst you don’t necessarily need any particular skills to do this, you do need to understand the know-how to get there.

When is a video background appropriate to use?

Video backgrounds are appropriate to use in many cases. Depending on the type of website you own may depend on whether you need one or not.

• Business or Online Sales: If you own a business and have products/services to sell, a video background can cement a sense of brand awareness. If you are selling a certain type of product, for example, ties, you could show a video of how to put a tie on correctly. Videos should make your potential customers want to buy something.
• Hotels and Accommodation: This is a great industry to make use of video backgrounds. There’s no better way to show off a hotel, B&B or similar than by using a video. You could show visitors around your accommodation, nearby areas, or fun activities they can get involved in.
• Healthcare: A carefully chosen video can promote trust and confidence in your customers. You can use videos in various ways, including healthcare professionals meeting with patients, staff connecting with each other, or show off your facilities.
• Digital Services: Although this may seem like a trickier area to conquer, video backgrounds are a fine way to show off your digital services. Showing customers how to use your services (e.g. an app or course), ways in which your customers can get support from others, etc.

If you use video backgrounds the right way, they can transform any type of website to encourage engagement and potential sales.

At this point, if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, don’t be. I promise that I will show you each step of how to use a video background effectively. If you don’t have a website built already, head over to our best website builders where you can start designing your own site in a matter of minutes.

When not to use a video background

As we know, video backgrounds draw attention to themselves. If you don’t want to draw attention from something specific on your website, a video background is not ideal.

For example, if you’re describing something important or a process for your customers to follow, you won’t want their attention to move elsewhere.

Videos are designed to improve the experience. If a video won’t help to improve your website visitor’s experience, then don’t use one. It’s really as simple as that.

Rules for using a video background

I’m going to run through some best practices for using video backgrounds. These are rules that you should follow in order to offer the best experience for your website:

• Short and sweet: Keep your videos short. Longer videos are inherently larger, causing your user’s to eat more of their bandwidth. This may also slow your website down which can have a poor effect on user experience, page speed, and SEO. Videos between 10-15 seconds in length are ideal.
• Excessive movement: Video backgrounds are just that, they are backgrounds. They shouldn’t make you feel like you’re on a rollercoaster ride. You’ll also need to consider users with motion sensitivity, so as not to deter potential customers.
• High quality: Videos should be high-quality, to begin with. You can optimise your videos after they’ve been uploaded, but in the first case, they need to be the best they can be.
• Relevance: Your video background should be relevant to your website, brand or business. Whilst there are plenty of awesome-looking videos out there, dumping one in randomly will not If your visitors are going to be drawn to your video background instantly, this will set the tone for the rest of their journey, so don’t confuse them.
• Remove audio: This may sound strange, but there’s a reason for it. Video backgrounds automatically play when your website loads, so audio will too. If someone is viewing your website discreetly, in a quiet place, or in the office, the last thing you want to do is deter them by blasting their ears with audio. Also, video backgrounds will not automatically play on mobile if they contain sound.

2. How and where to find videos

Unless you are ofay with making professional videos yourself, you’re going to need to find an appropriate video. Video backgrounds can’t just be taken from someone else, without their consent.

Saying that, your video skills don’t have to be perfect, as you can always hire someone to edit them for you. Some of the best videos I’ve seen have been filmed using a digital camera or mobile phone. The trick is to make them look awesome, post-filming.

If you want to hire a freelancer to create a video background for you or edit a video you’ve taken yourself, I suggest either UpWork or Fiverr. I’ve reviewed both of these platforms in my guide to finding the best freelancers.

For those of you who don’t want to create your own videos, here are some places you can source some stunning stock videos from. There are free and paid sources, so if budget is an issue, have no fear:

• Video Hive: Video Hive is part of the Envato group. Here you’ll find literally thousands of video backgrounds including stock footage, effects, and motion graphics. You can filter by tags, price, sales, rating, length of the video and lots more. Prices generally range from £8.73 – £38.13.
• Videvo: Videvo offers free stock video footage as well as motion graphics, effects and more. There’s a real variety on this website that would suit most types of websites. For example, landscapes, cars, pets, transport, healthcare, etc.

3. How to add video backgrounds to your website

So far, so good. We’ve learned when it’s appropriate to use video backgrounds, so hopefully, you’ve got an idea as to whether one would be suitable for your website or not.

If you’re still reading, I’m going to assume that you need a video for your website. Perhaps you’ve already found one using our stock video suggestions and now you’re reading to add a video background to your website.

Setting up a video background can be both easy and hard. It really depends on how your website has been developed.

Let’s explore some of the options:

Adding a video background to WordPress

If you’re using WordPress for your website, you can either find a theme that supports video background or find a suitable plugin. Both options are easy enough, but I’d like to cast your mind to a few key points.

• Plugin: If you decide to use a plugin for your video background, you’ll need to consider a few things. Firstly, does your theme support the plugin? If not, you may get conflicts that could end up causing issues or break your website.
• Theme: If your theme supports video backgrounds, it should be quite easy to get started. Different themes will, of course, have different ways of doing this. If you’re not sure how to do this, you should be able to contact the theme developer for support.

Adding a video background to Wix

If you’re 100% that you want to use a video background on your website and have yet to choose a website builder, I guarantee Wix is the easiest option.

You won’t need any coding skills to use Wix. Wix’s drag and drop functionality means you can drag elements from their toolbar and drop them onto your website, wherever you like.

To add a video background, the steps are simple:

• Click “Background” on the editor
• Choose “Video”
• Select whether you want to upload a video, add a free Wix video, or purchase a stock video

It’s worth noting that if you use a video background on Wix, it won’t show on mobile. Wix does offer a variety of video editing tools too, so you can adjust colours, overlay and add text to make your video background look awesome.

Adding a video background to Shopify

Shopify is similar to WordPress in that you can either find a theme that supports video background or use Shopify’s app store to find a suitable app.

Although it’s not as easy to add a video background to Shopify as it is with Wix, it’s not too difficult either. If you are selling products or services online, I recommend using Shopify due to its powerful eCommerce features.

Shopify’s themes don’t offer much in the way of video background support. There are some themes that allow you to add video backgrounds, but I would suggest seeking a theme from a third-party like ThemeForest.

4. Conclusion

I really hope this guide has been useful in establishing if a video background is appropriate for your website, where to find a video background, and how to add them to your website.

There are plenty of tools available to understand video backgrounds in more detail. However, if you follow our key principals and rules, I am confident you will be able to wow your website visitors with a video background.

Video landing pages and backgrounds are a great way to draw your website visitor’s attention to key information. It’s a way for you to showcase your best products, services, or details about your brand and business.

Using video backgrounds in the right way is a thing of beauty. I highly recommend checking out the resources available to you, as well as reading our reviews on website builders and eCommerce builders to find the perfect match.