Inline Mobile Video is Here and Mobile Sales Are At An All-Time High, Retailers Listen Up…
Nowadays companies must publish both standard and mobile websites. Search engine analytics prove that the world is trending towards mobile devices as a favored search and purchasing tool. The volume of mobile purchases stands at (a substantial) nearly two thirds today. The majority of web traffic by people investigating sites and products, happens on mobile devices.
Here at Profitable Media, we believe that great marketing includes compelling videos. The exponential increase in video playback apps testifies to this fact. Consumers love video images, and web developers took notice. As long as prospective customers researched from desktop computers, all was well in the universe. However, if they clutched their cell phones or tablets to shop, a marketer’s efforts to provide quality video experiences became something of a crapshoot.
Wistia quickly realized the need to blaze a trail around mobile OS native players, and their quirks, sparked recent changes to the iOS and Google browsers. They now allow for inline video streaming that can bypass their own native apps. Thus, new playback apps from cutting-edge web developers came online, too, in a meeting of the minds. Wistia, our preferred video platform partner, leads the way in inline video streaming products. Having felt the pinch of native mobile video apps, Wistia lost no time in updating their own platform.
The Troubles of Old Video Players
Old video players native to mobile operating systems were serviceable for a time. However, they have a few flaws that stymie innovative marketers who embed engaging, interactive video content on websites. The mobile playback apps suffer the following insufficiencies:
Not really optimized for mobile devices: Mobile technology necessitates specialized coding. Because the mobile revolution to smart phones and tablets is young yet, standardized video playback technology, designed originally for desktops, reached a level of streaming sophistication to meet the mobile need only within the past few years. As the evolution seeks maturity, mobile optimization still climbs a steep grade towards the peak of ubiquity.
Content disruption: Native video players on mobile devices can disrupt the browsing event as the video goes full-screen of its own accord. With no options to remain in the line of website elements, users uninterested in the video must manually close the player if they prefer to keep scrolling.
Redirection off-site: Some native players on mobile OS re-direct the prospect to the YouTube site if that is the host of the video image. Releasing viewers from the website risks losing them forever.
Customizations and controls could vanish: Since each mobile browser employs its own protocols, the carefully designed customizations installed on videos can fail to operate on some native players. This aspect presents a few headaches, especially with restricted content that can be downloaded for later playback.
Stultified desktop interactivity: Those interactive features that marketers put in place, such as playback speed options and log-in requirements, that work perfectly on desktops, have an equal chance of failure on native mobile playback apps.
The Benefits of Wistia’s New Inline Mobile Video Players
Fortunately, Wistia’s inline playback solves the problem of divergent app technology between desktop, tablet and smart phone devices. Advantages include:
No need for a native player: Wistia’s inline mobile video, by its very nature, streams without the use of the mobile browser’s native player. This means that missing player components won’t matter for the user to receive all the intended features of the video.
User chooses the scale: Inline video playback permits the user to view the video within the content without the video automatically taking over the whole screen. Rather, the viewer can choose the option to go full-screen by rotating to the landscape view or to continue scrolling the page if they prefer.
Playable on all browsers: Creators no longer need to manufacture video versions to suit all the major browsers, reducing the detailed grind of production. Simplicity stretches budgets for everyone involved!
Ensured security: The inline mobile playback technology keeps the gated videos secure. The publisher can disallow unauthorized downloads so only viewers with the proper credentials can stream the video.
Timeline features remain: Bypassing the native player allows all the controls, CTA’s, annotation links, forms, trackers, email collectors, hover boxes and all the other cool features of the video to remain intact and operable.
Adaptive streaming enabled: Stuttering videos send users packing to sites that cause them no indigestion. Upgrading to inline empowers adaptive streaming so viewers receive the highest quality video their device can support, including 4K, on both Android and iOS devices.
For the mobile user, inline video playback may seem natural, as though no jump-for-joy technology breakthroughs ever occurred. However, for direct marketing strategies, this mobile video optimization represents the fulfillment of a dream.