In today’s digital landscape, videos have carved out a special place for themselves. They have a reputation for being highly engaging to the audience. But what if you could take it a step further and make a video that gets your viewers to interact as well? This is exactly what an interactive video does!
So, how do you do it? Let us break down the whole process in this blog, with common use cases and so much more. So follow along!
What are Interactive Videos?
If you have already watched Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on Netflix, then you already have a brief introduction to Interactive videos. For those who have not, let me tell you what the movie was about.
In that movie, you make the decisions. You take the plot from one point to another, because the technical design of the movie would allow you to make these decisions. And this is what I mean when I say an Interactive video.
But why would you even want an interactive video? Interactive videos give a sense of purpose and control to the viewer, thus making them constantly involved, instead of playing the video as background noise while they scroll their phone.
And this is not just a claim, because studies suggest that Interactive videos get about 300% more engagement than standard video formats, which is a tremendous thing!
Who should consider an Interactive Video?
This is all well and good, but when should you use an Interactive video? When can you pick a traditional video, and where can Interactive video make a big difference? Let us figure that out!
You can pick an Interactive video to get improved benefits for the following reasons:
- You want higher engagement: Suppose you are making a video about your products or services and want your audience to be better engaged in the video; then Interactive can be the way to go. For example, you can list your product use cases and ask them to pick one that is best suited to their needs. This way, your video can only talk about the use case that they are interested in.
- Introduce an element of fun: Having interactive videos is generally fun when compared to a traditional video. You get to make choices and engage with it, which makes it all the more interesting.
- E-learning videos: Studies have shown that videos that involve audience interaction generally help people retain information better. Thus, incorporating them in E-learning videos can help boost learning.
What Are Different Interactive Elements That You Can Add to Your Video?
There are many types of Interactive elements that you can add to your video to make it more interesting. Some of them are:
1. Animated content
Animations are a great way of boosting engagement because they are fun and convey emotions better. Therefore, using them from time to time can be a good idea if you want to add a bit of interactivity to your videos.
Animations can also be a great way to prompt users to take a specific action, such as clicking on a link, downloading an application, or making a purchase.
2. Table of Contents
Some videos make it a point of displaying the content subheadings of the video on the left-hand side of the column. On clicking a particular subheading, you can navigate to that part of the video without hassle.
This is a great help for people who are looking for specific answers and do not have time to watch a complete video from start to finish.
3. Quizzes
This is a type of interactive element that is best suited for E-learning videos. Incorporating quizzes from time to time helps keep the viewers on their toes, makes it easier for them to retain information.
Furthermore, based on the quiz results, you can find out how effective your content and modules are. This way, you can improve your content to better suit your viewer requirements. It is a win-win for both parties!
4. Popups
Suppose you are talking about a particularly complex topic and want to add supporting links and documents for a specific part, then, Popups can be the perfect choice for you.
By adding supplementary links, you add authenticity to your content and also get to divert your audience to different content of yours. You can even use these Pop-ups to take your audience to your website, as a result improving your SEO.
5. Interactivity hotspots
Hotspots are very similar to hyperlinks, but instead of clicking on a text line, you are clicking on a spot in a video. These video hotspots then take the users to a quiz or a different page on your site.
You can even control the timing of these hotspots and prompt your users gently to interact with them. This is a great way to keep viewers hooked and also not overwhelm them with a ton of information.
6. Shopping features
These kinds of interactive elements when you are displaying your products or services in a video or a product demo video. You can use a gentle “Shop Now” button in your video.
This way, the shopping journey is vastly shortened and makes the purchasing process much smoother for the user as well.
5 Steps To Creating Interactive Videos
Now, comes the part where you will be mind-blown. If you listened to these features so far and thought that Interactive videos can be expensive and hard to make, then you are oddly mistaken. How? With the help of AI tools, you can get it done for much cheaper and much quicker.
So, let us see how you can create an interactive video from scratch, from planning to execution and everything in between.
1. Defining the Objective
Before making a video, you need to figure out what the objective and the target audience for the video are. This will also help you figure out what interactive elements to add and how to pace them.
Some of the common objectives that Interactive elements can help us achieve are:
- Prolonged watch time
- Improved information retention
- Increased click-through rate
- Shopping products shown in the video
- Navigating to different parts of the video
- Getting people to visit your website
2. Storyboarding your content
With an objective in mind, the content needs to be figured out revolving it. When thinking about the core content of your video, make sure to talk about a small enough topic so that you can convey it comprehensively.
Split the content into scenes and write down scripts for it all, so that you can align it properly with the interactive elements.
Make sure to use interactive elements only to help people retain the core idea of your video; therefore, use them sparsely. If you use too many interactive elements, it might take the concentration off your message, making the audience lose sight of what is important.
3. Making the video
The next step to tackle is making the video. Normally, this would require you to have a team of professionals, camera equipment, and a big budget to get this done. But, not anymore.
Because Predis AI can make the video for you with a much lesser budget and resources, but without a compromise on quality. Okay, with that being said, let us see how you can create a video with Predis AI.
- Sign up for Predis AI and create a free account if you are a new user.
- Click on the “Create New” option to start creating the video.
- You can then pick the type of video that you want to make. For the sake of this blog, we are going to be picking a voiceover video.
- The next step is to write a detailed prompt with whatever you want to present in the video. You can additionally choose the dimensions of the video and the type of media that you want to use, such as stock images, AI-generated ones, and so on.
- Once you are happy with the customisations, click “Generate” and the post will be created in a matter of seconds.
Now, you can download the video and insert it into a different tool to add interactive elements to the video.
4. Add the Interactive elements
Now that the video is made as per your preference, you can then upload it to an interactive element editor such as Supademo to add the elements.
Supademo is a user-friendly editor that allows you to easily add animation, hotspots, and so much more with simple steps.
Once you have added the popups as you want, you can now download the video in your preferred format, such as GIF or video, and in different resolutions as well.
5. Analyze Performance
Once you have made the video and put it out for the world to see, the real work begins. This is to measure the performance of the video, which means you have to keep track of the following metrics:
- Click-through rate: measures how often viewers click on the interactive elements.
- Conversion rate: a measure of how many people take the final conversion step, such as submitting a form
- Interaction rate: The number of people who click, submit responses and so on.
- Branching path: The path choices that most people make which is an indication of their preference
- Video views and watch time: the amount of time people spend watching your content.
- Comparison with static content: Compare these metrics with normal video content to see how they differ
Based on these metrics, you can gauge how efficient these videos are when compared to normal videos.
Best Practices To Keep in Mind When Making Interactive Videos
Interactive videos are not like conventional videos. Therefore, to make them hit the spot, you need to follow some best practices.
- Have an interaction early on: Human attention span has immensely reduced due to social media. This means if you do not insert an interaction element early on in the video, then you might lose their interest completely. Therefore, include one such element within 8 seconds of your video.
- Give clear instructions: If you are having an interactive element such as a popup or a shopping link, then include appropriate prompts to explain what they are.
- Choose elements that match your brand: If using GIFs or animations in your video, then make sure that they are in line with your brand aesthetics.
- Test the video: Elements that you may think go with the video might not be received the same way by your audience. So, before sending out the video into the world, make sure to rigorously test it internally to see how people view it.
Benefits of Using Interactive Videos in Your Marketing Strategy
Some of the common benefits that you can get by using Interactive videos in your marketing strategy are as follows:
- Improved viewer engagement because viewers have control over the outcome of the video.
- First-party data collection is possible since users interact with the video, make choices, and register their preferences. Collecting data this way is even more ethical than getting them from third-party sources.
- Improved recollection since people watch the video and interact with the elements. This way, they will be more equipped to make a conversion at the end of the video and thus improving your ROI.
- Learning outcomes are better achieved by incorporating quizzes into the videos. You can even assess the efficiency of your learning modules and fine-tune them.
The Bottom Line
Making interactive videos and getting people to engage with them is pretty easy if you are handy with AI tools that can make your life easier. So, start your video-making journey today by signing up today to get your free account on Predis AI!
FAQ:
An interactive video is a video that engages the audience by allowing them to make choices such as clicking on pop-ups, choosing shopping links, and so on. This gives them greater control over the video, thus improving the retention rate.
Interactive videos improve the engagement rate, better retention of information in e-learning videos, gather first-party information about the user, and so much more. These are just some of the reasons why you should use Interactive elements in your strategy.
