Why You Should Embed Videos on Your Website

Social media and YouTube are perfect for getting your videos out there and improving reach, but embedding them on your website is the way to go if you want to get real results for your business.

Videos on your site can boost search rankings, bring in more visitors, and turn them into customers or leads.

Embedding puts you in control

Before putting a video on your site, you have to upload your video to a hosting platform. That’s where all the magic happens. With a good platform, you can:

Make your videos more accessible

Social platforms check the accessibility box with basic captions — if that. On YouTube, you get auto-generated captions, but they often miss the mark. On Instagram or TikTok, you might have to burn in your subtitles, and customization is limited at best.

With video platforms like Wistia, you can go further. Edit transcripts and turn them into accurate captions, dub your video in different languages, pick high-contrast player colors, and voila! You now have content that connects and resonates with a broader audience.

Easily turn viewers into leads

Social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn are built to keep users scrolling, not send them to your site. That’s why your links end up outside the video, buried in a caption, comment, or bio. Viewers have to dig around to find them, and many don’t bother. The key to converting your viewers into leads or customers is to offer links right in your videos. YouTube lets you do that with clickable overlays, but they’re easy to miss. If you want more viewers to take action, you need interactive features that stand out and are built to convert. For example, Wistia lets you add clickable calls to action (CTAs), annotation links, and email capture forms to your videos. The CTAs and email capture forms take up the whole screen, and you can make your forms unskippable so viewers have to fill them out if they want to keep watching.

Get clear performance insights

Most social platforms keep you in the dark when it comes to real insights. You get views, likes, and maybe watch time. TikTok and Instagram show some engagement stats, but not much else. YouTube digs a bit deeper with watch data, but it still doesn’t tell you the full story.

Some video platforms give you a lot more to work with. Wistia, for example, gives you a unique heatmap for every viewer. You’ll see exactly which parts of your video they watched, rewatched, or skipped. This helps you figure out what’s working, fix what’s not, and make smarter decisions for your video strategy.

Videos bring traffic to your site and keep it there

The right video platform can help you:

Rank in search results

Video platforms like Wistia automatically add schema markup and metadata to help your videos surface in search results, and anyone who clicks on them lands on your site. Keep in mind that while YouTube videos also show up in search results, anyone who clicks on them lands on YouTube.com instead of the website where they’re embedded.

Keep visitors on your site even longer

Did you know that videos on a page can keep visitors around for two more minutes? This gives your content more time to do its job. And when your video platform avoids ads and distractions from other brands, visitors are even more likely to stay longer and convert.

Embedding is easier than it sounds

With Wistia, all you have to do is upload, copy, paste, and publish. No dev help needed.

1. Upload your video to Wistia and customize it
2. Copy the embed code
3. Drop the code in your content management system (CMS)
4. Hit that publish button Want more detailed steps? We’ve got just the thing for you.

Grab a free copy of our embedding guide

This guide walks you through everything you need to know about embedding videos on your site, from choosing embed styles and creating video collections to tracking performance and much more. And you’ll get data-backed pro tips like the best spots to put videos on your site!

More reasons to embed with Wistia

We said it before, and we’ll say it again: The right video platform makes all the difference. You want one that makes the entire embedding process easy and helps you deliver a great viewing experience to your audience. Wistia fits the bill. Here’s what it has to offer:

• Fast, lightweight performance: Wistia has the fastest video player on the market. It’s lightweight, so it loads quickly and plays smoothly every time.
• Custom branding: You can easily change your player’s logo, thumbnail, color, and shape to match your brand and website.
• More accessible videos: In just a few clicks, you can add a bunch of accessibility features to help more people consume your content.
• Easy swaps: Replace the video file in Wistia, and the change appears everywhere the video is embedded — and you won’t lose any analytics.
• Video collections: In Wistia, it’s easy to create, customize, and showcase a collection of videos to keep people watching longer.
• MAP integrations: Collect leads from videos, send them to your marketing automation platform, and schedule automatic actions based on video interactions.