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How to Make a Great Intro Video for Your Website

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How to Make a Great Intro Video for Your Website

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In fact, on average, people than they do on sites without them. stay 2 minutes longer on sites with videos Anything can happen in two minutes online -- so why wouldn't you want to capitalize on it?

One of the most common and useful videos to start with is an intro video.

An intro video is exactly what it sounds like, a short, direct, introductory video that tells the viewer everything they need to know about your product/service and business while also setting the tone for your brand and the rest of your content.

Incorporating an intro video into the layout of your website (especially your homepage) can be an effective way to getting your visitor's attention. Ultimately, this allows you to tell a story, bring your company to life, and increase conversions.

Still on the fence about adding an intro video to your homepage? This stat from Adelie Studios might give you the confirmation you need: "homepage videos increase conversions by 20% or more."

However, how can you create an intro video that will captivate your visitors, inspire them to connect with you, or even drive them to make a purchase?

You need a plan to ensure you're evoking emotions such as trust, confidence, and curiosity to make your story come alive in your intro video.

With that in mind, here are six tips for crafting an exemplary introductory video that generates leads and builds a connection with your audience.
1. Make sure you have a goal/purpose.
Don't create a video just to have a video. If your video is boring and provides no value to those watching it, what's the point?

Your video has to have a goal/purpose. What do you want it to do? What are you trying to communicate?

The purpose of your video might include:

Showcasing your team's talent

Introducing your audience to your company and explaining what you do

Highlighting your products features and showing how it works

Identifying how your product is created

Interested in learning more about identifying your videos objective? Check out this article by Simple Story Videos .
Most intro videos have a target objective of awareness, education, and persuasion. An intro video is a way for your audience to explain your organization beyond just written words. It gives your audience an opportunity to better experience your brand and understand if it can help them truly solve your pain points and achieve your goals.

Research from Digital Sherpa shows that video can increase your customers' understanding of your products and services by as much as 74% .

2. Keep it short and to the point.

According to TheNextWeb , your audience will determine whether to watch your video based on two things; your thumbnail and the videos length.

So, in order maximize the impact your intro video, be sure to keep it short. In order for you to capture and maintain their attention, your video should be between two and three minutes long .

If it needs to be longer than three minutes, be sure to frontload it with the most important information. Especially when you consider these video analytics from Wistia .

3. Humanize Your Brand.

People want to work with other people and unfortunately in today's digital world, it can be difficult to find this human connection. Fortunately, a great intro video can make this significantly easier.

Intro videos are a great way to humanize your brand, show personality, and share what it's really like to do work with your company. Some easy ways to highlight your personality include:

showing candid clips of your team working

utilizing b-roll of your office (show off your space or your mascot)

including face-to-face interviews or voice overs

Just be you -- even if you're a little quirky It makes it easier for your audience to relate to and connect with a company that shows personality than one is cold and professional.

4. End Your Video with a Call-to-Action.

You could have the best introductory video that was ever created, but it won't matter if you're not telling your visitors what to do next. Don't leave them hanging.

We previously talked about how your video needs to have a purpose. Do you want them to donate, subscribe to your blog, request a quote or consultation?

No matter what type of action you what them to perform, make sure that it's clearly stated at the end of the video. (You can also consider including an actual button CTA or embedded form.)

If you use Wistia as your video hosting platform, you can utilize their Turnstile email collector to encourage lead conversions right away.

5. Turn off Auto-Play.

Remember when you were a kid and your parents or teachers made you do things you didn't want to? Didn't it make you want to do the complete opposite?

The same concept can apply to your auto-play video. Don't force your audience to watch your video, make them want to watch it.

People today are always multi-tasking and there's nothing more annoying than having several tabs open, hearing a video start playing, and not knowing where it's coming from.

Give your visitors the opportunity to glance over the content of the page. If they're interested in what you have to offer, they're more likely to stick around and hit the play button.

You can also consider adding visual or written directional cues in your content to further encourage people to watch.
According to Brightcove , "62% of consumers are more likely to have a negative perception of a brand that published a poor quality video."
6. Don't Skimp on Quality.

You're not posting a video on your personal social media page; you're introducing people to your brand on your professional website. So, think twice before you grab any old camera

To ensure that you're producing a high quality video, you'll want to:

Avoid any feedback / noise when filming.

Pay attention to lighting.

If you're highlighting your team and office, make sure everyone looks their best and that the office is clean.

Be sure to use a tripod to steady the camera

Don't have the equipment readily available? work with someone that has experience and the necessary equipment.

Give your audience the best representation of your brand. Poor quality on your site could be representative of poor quality for your product or service.

Who's Done it Right?

Video Hosting for Business | Wistia
It should come as no surprise, but Wistia currently has an impressive homepage intro video that accomplishes everything mentioned above and so much more.

Take a look and keep this in mind as you start filming yours:

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How to Make a Great Intro Video for Your Website

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In fact, on average, people than they do on sites without them. stay 2 minutes longer on sites with videos Anything can happen in two minutes online -- so why wouldn't you want to capitalize on it? One of the most common and useful videos to start with is an intro video.

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Animoto
Adobe Spark
iMovie
Screencastify

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Do I Need a Digital Teaching Portfolio?

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Edwige Simon

Director of the Elevate Program at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Designing a well-organized and professional teaching portfolio can give you an edge in a competitive job market, and help you score high marks on your school's teacher evaluation form. It is, however, a time-consuming endeavor (the average portfolio takes about two to three days of work), and once built, your portfolio will require regular attention. This post will help you decide whether or not a portfolio will serve your professional goals and how to go about designing a professional-looking site that showcases your teaching skills.

1. Do I Need a Portfolio?

There are several reasons to start building a portfolio:

You're looking for a new job. A media-rich teaching portfolio will give employers a deeper insight into your teaching practices while signaling that you're a 21st century teacher. Having a teaching portfolio can be a decisive element at the interview stage of the hiring process (Mosely, 2005).

You want to share what you do and learn from others. Your teaching portfolio can be the home base of your personal learning network (PLN). You can repost articles you read, write blog entries about interesting aspects of your teaching experience, and mention professional development events that you have attended.

You want one channel of communication with parents, colleagues and administrators. You can use the same site to communicate effectively with everyone in your practice, including students. Some teachers use the blog part of their portfolios to post important announcements and classroom updates for parents.

Upload teaching artifacts and evidence of student learning. Many teacher evaluation instruments now rely heavily on learning artifacts (see Colorado SB 10-191). When showcasing student work, make sure to get proper permissions from the students' parents.

2. How to Get Started

Choose a platform. Blogger and Google Sites integrate well with other Google tools. WordPress has an excellent collection of widgets, and Weebly has a stunning template collection. Invest a little bit of time in exploring the tools available to you, and choose the one you find the most compelling.

Choose an address. Make sure that your site URL is easy for your audience to remember.

Choose a template. A simple template is best, but consider uploading a custom banner to personalize your site. You can purchase a banner-size picture from a photo sharing site such as iStock, or have somebody take pictures of you teaching. Remember that you must have the legal rights to every image you use.

Keep the design clean and simple. Choose a bright and clean color scheme. If posting pictures of yourself and your students, select the best ones and make sure you have all proper permissions.

3. What to Include

Title page: your portfolio should have a clear title at the top. It should be obvious to any visitors that they are viewing a teaching portfolio.

Clearly labeled navigation: your navigation bar should be clearly labeled, as most visitors will soon leave if they find the organization confusing.

"Must Have" pages:

A Home or About Me page with a short welcome paragraph, a brief biography, and a professional picture of you.

Your resume, which could be a summary of your education, skills, and experience that includes a link to a PDF version of your full resume.

Your teaching philosophy shouldn't be longer than a page, should be entirely your own, and should be free of typos and grammar errors.

Sample annotated lesson plans -- avoid posting links to PDF versions of your favorite lessons plans. Nobody has time to read through entire documents. Instead, write a short paragraph explaining some of your favorite and most successful classroom activities. Include student feedback if possible, pictures or screenshots, and a link to the lesson plan itself at the end of your description.

For the materials that you created yourself, add a Creative Commons license at the bottom of each lesson plan or resource that you share. It will show an awareness of copyright issues, and allow you to decide how other teachers may use the materials you shared with them.

Links to your social media profiles (Twitter and LinkedIn, for example, but not Facebook unless your profile is strictly professional).

Other pages you may include:

A contact page listing your email address so that your peers can contact you about your work.

Feedback from peers, parents, and students can take the form of quotes from their letters or emails to you.

An instructional technology page -- although your web-based portfolio itself will serve as evidence of your technical skills, you may add a page to showcase the technology-based projects you have implemented in your classes.

A page on extracurricular activities, such as taking students abroad or leading the chess club.

A blog page.

4. What to Leave Out

Your portfolio is your 21st century digital business card. Do your best to present a coherent picture of your professional self and leave out any irrelevant or personal information pertaining to your hobbies or family.

5. Maintaining Your Portfolio

The most challenging aspect of having a teaching portfolio is keeping it up to date. While time consuming to build, teaching portfolios can be professional assets to teachers, especially when built to serve multiple purposes and audiences. They represent clear evidence that you're actively engaged in your community of practice and might even open doors and create professional opportunities that you had not anticipated.

What tips have you learned from creating and maintaining your portfolio?

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Edwige Simon Director of the Elevate Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Designing a well-organized and professional teaching portfolio can give you an edge in a competitive job market, and help you score high marks on your school's teacher evaluation form.

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Check out this video on horizontal vs vertical taping:

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Mario and Fafa talk about a very serious problem. Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/gloveandboots VVS- A PSA Subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=gloveandboots If you like our puppet web series, visit: http://www.gloveandboots.com

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Please find a buddy and provide peer feedback on their resume & cover letter. Use the document attached and PLEASE MAKE A COPY!