Four Exciting Updates to Wistia Channels

Have you checked out Wistia Channels yet? This powerful feature can help you turn a collection of webinars, educational content, and even podcasts into a customizable, lead-generating experience — without help from your development team. Now that we’ve introduced the feature, we’re excited to share four new updates to Channels that are about to make your life a whole lot easier as a marketer. From lead generation to branding and customization, let’s take a look at what’s new.

1. Generate more leads with gated Channels

Want to gate your valuable content? We thought you might. With this update, you can require your audience to enter their emails before they can dig into your videos and podcasts. Now, when you enable the subscribe button on your Channel, you’ll be able to prompt visitors to enter information like their name and email to get access.

When gating is enabled, you’ll see a lock icon on your content to give your audience a clue that they’re about to dive into some exclusive videos or podcasts. Want to see how the experience works? Check out how our marketing team embedded and gated a webinar series about Channels (how meta) right here.

Speaking of embedding, our next update gives you more flexibility for how, and where, you can embed your content experiences.

2. Get embedding flexibility with headerless Channels

Channels have always offered easy-to-use customizations that help you make your content look professional and on-brand. From picking a player color and choosing light or dark mode to uploading your own logo, you have control. And now we give you even more flexibility for how you show off your content.

You can still create a full-page experience that can stand alone and encourage your audience to spend more time with your content. Or, with this update, you can turn off your header for a more curated experience.

Turning the header off on your Channel allows you to embed a selection of videos right in line with other content on a page. This gives you a ton of options for how you show off your videos and podcasts. Have a blog post that needs a video carousel? You can embed that with Channels. Need to highlight some customer stories on a landing page? You guessed it (again). You can embed that with Channels. You can even embed your podcasts in a streamlined collection on your website.

You get the idea. With a simple toggle on or off, you have the flexibility to add videos or podcasts, anywhere on your website, without bothering your dev team. (That’s the dream, right?)

3. Pick a layout that suits your content with List View

Now let’s get into some more formatting goodness. In addition to Carousel and Grid Views, you can embed your content in a List View. This view will give your viewers and listeners a bit more context about a video or audio episode so they know what they’re getting into before pressing play. It puts less of an emphasis on the visuals and more of an emphasis on your content descriptions.

As the name might suggest, it’s also great for consolidating your content, giving you more of a playlist vibe you might be looking for.

Take a look at the List View we use to display our podcast, A Better Workplace.

4. Feature specific videos and podcasts prominently

Looking to engage visitors right away when they land on your Channel? Now you can turn on a featured content section to highlight a specific video or podcast episode. Whether it’s your highest-converting video, an educational podcast episode, or your most popular product video, you choose what to showcase. This functionality also allows you to write a title and description that help give your audience some context about why they should watch or listen — front and center.

Give these useful new Channels features a try!

We hope you enjoy these new Channel updates. If you have any comments or feedback, we want to hear from you — get in touch with our Support team! And as always, keep an eye on our blog for more tips on how to use Wistia to elevate your content and grow your brand.