Alright, I’ve had about enough of this stuff. Lots of websites incorporate video. Whether they be promotional or advertisements, videos should never be automatically played when the website loads.

Just because you think people may want to watch your videos doesn’t mean that they want your videos to automatically start playing.

Scenario:

I load your website because I’m interested in your product or service or in learning more about your company. My music is playing at my preferred volume. All of a sudden, some woman starts speaking at me in some motivational speaker tone of voice, loudly, clearly, and annoyingly! I close the window holding your site. You’ve pissed me off. I’m not interested in your product, service, or company any longer. Spiteful? Sure, why not! I’m browsing the web and your site got rid of me… very quickly.

And if I haven’t yet closed the window holding your website, then I’m probably stumbling around your website looking for something that’s moving, hoping to easily find a stop or pause button. But this effort only comes around when I’m feeling patient, and as you can tell (at the time of this writing) even I run out of patience!

Lesson learned

Users know who to click. Even the most rudimentary computer user knows to click the mouse. After taking the action to click something, a response is usually invoked. So the user knows to click, wait, and check out what’s changed.

Let your users click the video. Put a youtube style play button on it, you know the kind… The one with the big circle and the triangle that points to the right, simulating a play button (isn’t this kind of a standard by now?!). Your users will recognize the play button, they’ll click it, and then they’ll watch and listen to your video.