You can easily create an eye-catching WordPress website by including videos. However, your bounce rate can quickly increase if these videos have glitches or keep freezing.
Fortunately, there are a few effective ways you can optimize your WordPress video portfolio. By using the right tools, you can improve your page speed and boost your engagement rates.
In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of optimizing the videos on your WordPress website. Then, we’ll show you three effective ways to do it. Let’s get started!
Why You Should Consider Optimizing Your WordPress Video Portfolio
Videos are one of the most engaging types of content on the internet. In fact, there were about 244 million video viewers in 2020. This means that many visitors prefer the convenience of watching videos rather than reading long posts.
By adding videos, you can make your content more interesting. This can help engage visitors and influence them to stay longer. Additionally, they may be more likely to share your videos on social media.
However, your videos need to look professional. If viewers experience poor resolution or glitches, they could leave your website without buying your products or services. Having a high bounce rate could hurt your business growth, so it’s important to optimize your videos.
How to Optimize Your WordPress Video Portfolio (3 Tips)
Video content can make or break your website design. However, there are a few strategies you can use to avoid performance issues. Let’s go over the ways that you can integrate well-functioning videos into WordPress.
1. Use a Video Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A Content Delivery Network, or CDN, is a set of widely distributed servers. Each server caches content from the original source, decreasing the distance that content has to travel. This can help decrease loading times.
You may want to consider opting for a video CDN. This is a content-caching network designed to support video streaming. Video CDNs can significantly reduce latency and buffering in videos. Without this tool, your server might overload in its attempt to reach distant viewers.
We recommend Fastly as a cost-effective CDN provider:
With Fastly, you can cache your video media files and avoid streaming difficulties, even if you receive high web traffic. You can also access logs and real-time analytics so that you can improve your user experience.
2. Host Videos On Third-Party Platforms
You might be experiencing poor video quality because of the way you’re adding content to WordPress. Often, it’s best to embed videos rather than upload them to your site.
When you sign up for a video hosting provider, you’re given a certain amount of server resources to handle your web traffic. Videos require a lot of bandwidth, which could take a serious toll on your server speed. If you have shared plans, you can easily overload your server with large video files.
Additionally, WordPress has a maximum file upload size. Therefore, uploading a large video file may cause freezing or long loading times.
To avoid these problems, you can upload videos to third-party platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo. Then, you can embed the video on WordPress.
If you’re using Gutenberg, you can click on the plus sign (+) to add a new block and go to Embeds. Here, you’ll see options for displaying content published on YouTube or Vimeo:
All you have to do is copy the URL of your video and paste it into the embed block. The browser will then fetch the content from the third-party service.
Embedding a video in the portfolio section from our WordPress video themes is just as simple and require to paste the address of your video or upload it directly to your website:
Keep in mind that when you use a third-party video platform, you’ll have less control over how your content appears on your website. Your viewers may see ads and suggested videos based on the platform’s algorithm.
3. Choose a Streamlined Theme
If you use the right WordPress theme, your content may be more responsive. With a streamlined theme like Inspiro Pro, you can professionally organize your video portfolio and start attracting new clients:
Inspiro Pro is a theme that focuses on optimizing video and image content. It includes templates and custom widgets that you can upload to your WordPress website. When using these features, you can customize your page layout and easily embed videos:
Here are some other key features of Inspiro Pro:
- Compatible with videos from YouTube or Vimeo
- Comes with a custom Elementor Portfolio widget
- Produces a responsive layout
- Includes starter sites and page templates for designing a portfolio
With Inspiro Pro, you can add dynamic features to your videos, including autoplay, backgrounds, and hover effects. Moreover, you can use the Elementor add-ons plugin to drag and drop your favorite design elements and build a unique layout.
Inspiro Lite is the free version of the theme and supports image and video integration. Additionally, it is compatible with WooCommerce, Elementor, and Beaver Builder, so you can fully customize your video portfolio.
Conclusion
When you embed videos into your WordPress website, you can create a portfolio that engages visitors with your content. However, it’s important to optimize your site to avoid slow loading times and overloaded servers.
To recap, here are our top three tips for optimizing your WordPress video portfolio:
- Use a video CDN like Fastly.
- Host videos on third-party platforms like YouTube and Vimeo, and embed them on your site.
- Choose a streamlined theme like Inspiro Pro.
Do you have any questions about improving the videos on your WordPress website? Let us know in the comments section below!
