We already know how people use their mobile phones nowadays to browse the internet, get in touch with brands, go shopping, and do anything else. However, people now show their preferences for videos on their mobile devices. In fact, mobile video consumption doubles every year.
Aside from leveraging video content, it is essential to optimize your video content to increase engagement across devices and give a seamless experience to users. With this, we will share optimization strategies to optimize your video content for mobile viewers for maximum engagement and impact on users.
What Is Mobile Optimization?
More than 58% of overall website traffic is from mobile devices. This clearly shows how important it is to optimize content for mobile devices to maximize the impact of your business on users. Businesses optimize their content to attain this.
To do this, they employ strategies to make their websites mobile-friendly so users can view site content flawlessly. Netflix, the world’s largest streaming platform, noticed how mobile viewers have different habits and preferences than desktop users.
So, they optimized their video quality and compressed them to allow mobile users to stream with less data and bandwidth. They also add downloading and offline viewing features, then personalized notifications and recommendations to enhance user engagement and retention.
With this, they experienced an increase in their app download by 40% and engagement by 35%.
Why Mobile Optimization Matters?
Optimizing content for mobile devices remains essential to improve ranking in search engines and user experience for the rising number of mobile users, which leads to higher conversion rates.
Optimizing content for mobile devices remains essential to improve ranking in search engines and user experience for the rising number of mobile users, which leads to higher conversion rates.
1. More people use mobile devices
It has been forecasted that mobile users will reach 7.49 billion in 2025. Mobile optimization of websites ensures that businesses reach a larger audience.
2. Improved user experience
Unoptimized websites for mobile devices may be hard for users to navigate and have slow load times, which can be a frustrating experience. With mobile optimization, websites will load faster and will be easier to navigate with its simplified layouts, resulting in a more positive user experience.
3. Search engine ranking
Google, though not really required, strongly recommends having a mobile version of website pages because it predominantly uses the content’s mobile version to index and rank content using the smartphone agent.
If you have a mobile-optimized website, you have a good chance to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).
4. Higher conversion rates
The issues of the unoptimized website for mobile, such as very small details that cannot be read, difficulty to navigate, and difficulty to input details, frustrate users and make them unable to take action, resulting in low conversion rates.
Optimizing website content for mobile users makes it easy to take action, increasing the conversion rate.
However, nowadays, users prefer videos over written text — 80% of individuals. This data clearly shows that optimization for mobile website content should extend to video content.
Understanding Video Content for Mobile
When wanting to stand out among competitors, you might want to use video content as people show preference for it nowadays. It has been one of the most engaging types of content whether you are a profit or non-profit brand.
Videos deliver stories, and with the traffic coming from mobile users, it is very helpful to optimize your video content for better engagement among different devices and maximize user experience.
How to Optimize Your Video Content for Mobile Viewers
It is important to leverage proper strategies to optimize video content for mobile users.
Know Your Audience
Mobile viewers have different watching patterns depending on their age, interests, and the context in which they want to consume.
Understand your specific audience’s demographics and viewing habits on mobile to make video content that is engaging for them. The video’s style and language of the content should show a connection to your specific audience. It can be done through visuals and terminologies that appeal directly to them.
Also, consider the platforms where your audience consumes video content, like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube.
Choose the Right Video Format for Mobile
The video format is the standard of how videos are stored, coded, and decoded, consisting of the container and codec. Common containers are AVI, MP4, MOV, and MKV, while common codecs are VP9, H.264, HEVC, and AV1.
Video formats affect how the video content is viewed on mobile devices in terms of quality, compatibility, size, data consumption, and performance, so it is important to keep your video in the optimal video format, which is MP4, H.264 Codec, and HVEC/H/265.
MP4 is a universally accepted video format across different mobile devices, while H.264 balances quality and size for mobile streaming and playback. HVEC (H.265) enables high-quality videos in a small file size, perfect for devices with limited storage and bandwidth availability.
Make Your Titles Short and Enticing
Remember the limited character space available for video titles in search results. On mobile devices, only a portion of a title may be visible, so keep titles short and to the point.
Aim for engaging titles that accurately reflect the content of the video within the first few words. Use strong, action-oriented language to immediately capture the viewer’s attention. Incorporating relevant keywords into the video’s subject matter can improve users’ discoverability.
Keep Your Video Short and Engaging
Mobile viewers consume content on the go, which is why shorter videos are more suitable. Unlike desktop users, who may have the luxury of uninterrupted time, mobile users frequently face distractions and shorter attention spans.
The engagement of mobile users to video content decreases as the video length increases. Videos under 60 seconds receive the most engagement.
For those reaching a 5-minute video, people will likely watch at least 50% of it, and its engagement continues to decrease the longer the video is – 38% average engagement rate for 5 to 30-minute videos.
It is important to trim the video down to its essential content and keep it engaging throughout to capture and retain the attention of mobile viewers.
Capture Good, Solid Audio
People often are in a noisy environment when watching videos on mobile phones. Clear audio quality can retain viewer engagement and convey the message more effectively. You may invest in a high-quality and noise-canceling microphone to eliminate background disturbances for better engagement.
Implement Closed Captions for Mobile Accessibility
Closed captions facilitate understanding deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers to access your video content. It is also invaluable for viewers in noisy environments where audio might be challenging to hear or for those who prefer to watch videos with sound off.
You may generate closed captions through manual creation, captioning service, and automatic generation tools.
Manual creation has the highest accuracy but can be time-consuming, captioning services provide a balance between accuracy and efficiency, and automatic generation tools offer a quick solution, though it is recommended to edit and verify the captions to ensure they are correct and synchronized with the video.
Create Clear Thumbnails for Mobile Videos
Mobile viewers see thumbnails on search results, social media platforms, or YouTube before they see your video content.
Designing clear, high-resolution thumbnails that accurately reflect the video content entices users to click and watch your content. Thumbnails should have contrasting colors, text overlays, and visuals to grab attention on small screens and stand out amongst the competition.
It also provides potential viewers a clear indication of what to expect, increasing click-through rates and viewer engagement.
Optimize Video for Vertical Viewing
Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat show vertical videos, and this capitalizes on how people naturally hold their smartphones. You should optimize your video for vertical viewing to provide more intuitive and engaging content for viewers.
Film vertically so your content fills the screen and caters to mobile viewers’ preferences. Keep the text on your video at the center and within the vertical frame so that it won’t be cut off or obscured. Also, make sure graphics and calls-to-action are prominent and readable in the vertical format to enhance the viewing experience and maximize engagement with your mobile audience.
Enhance Video Loading Speed
When a video on a website takes too long to load, it frustrates users, causes them to lose interest, and leaves your site. This high bounce rate can impact your ranking negatively.
If your video content is large in file size, reduce its size without compromising the quality by compressing it to load faster on mobile devices. As most mobile screens do not support ultra-high definition, scale down the resolution of your video to 1080p or 720p for it to be acceptable to most users’ devices.
Improve User Experience
Make sure your elements are not difficult to interact with on a small screen, such as tiny text or complex forms. Instead, opt for larger, easily tappable buttons and clear, concise text that is easy to read without zooming in.
Also, make sure that the video has clear navigation, especially for longer content. Use chapter markers or timestamps to allow viewers to easily jump to sections of interest.
Measuring Success: Analyzing Mobile Video Performance
After implementing the strategies discussed to optimize your video content, it is important to measure its success to understand its impact and make necessary decisions for the future.
Here are the metrics you need to care about.
View Count
The number of times your video has been viewed. A single person watching your video multiple times will register as multiple views.
Play Rate
The percentage of people who click on your video to start watching it. A low play rate indicates that your video thumbnail or title is not enticing enough.
Watch Time
The amount of time viewers have spent watching your video. A higher watch time indicates that your content is engaging and holding viewers’ attention.
Engagement
The likes, comments, and shares your video receives. High engagement means quality content that resonates with your audience.
Completion Rate
The viewers (in percentage) who watched your whole video. A high completion rate shows well-structured content that is engaging enough to keep viewers watching until the end.
You can use Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, and YouTube Analytics to gather in-depth data.
Conclusion
With the majority of consumers using mobile and their preference for video content, it is important to not just leverage video content but to optimize it for mobile viewing as well.
You can attain this by ensuring clear audio, incorporating closed captions, designing eye-catching thumbnails, and enhancing video loading speed. These can provide a seamless user experience and improved viewer engagement across devices.
Make the most out of your video content with these strategies today!
Author: Kevin, CEO and founder of Aemorph.
