Best length for a video on a website

[RobertFisher]

Most of us deal with UI/UX questions and SEO questions from clients on a daily basis. I was discussing video length with a client recently and I realized that he was in his video. This made me think about the thrill of seeing yourself in video might cause someone to make their video longer at the expense of UX. So, I thought I would put it to the Moz community. If a company is doing a "typical" home page "Explainer" video that tells about a company. This can be in the B2B or B2C sectors. I want to withhold my opinion at this point for the discussion.

[EGOL]

"typical" home page "Explainer" video that tells about a company.

I'd rather see explainer videos about products and services.  Information that I want and need.

An explainer video "about a company".... sounds kinda sleepy.... I go to Wikipedia for that type of info because C-level company people are going to be thumpin' their chests and I'd rather read just the facts, presented with lots of subheadings so I can jump over what I don't need to know.

[RobertFisher]

I agree, this is excellent. So, assuming that it is about their services how long are you willing to endure? Obviously, if they are not getting to a point, etc. you are going to leave before it ends no matter what. My interest in this is in trying to get clients to understand what works vs. what looks good to them. 
Do you look at video length when you begin to watch it or before you hit play? Does a certain length make you less likely to go forward?

Thanks as always EGOL,

Robert

[Mobilio]

+1

This remind me when i talking about websites with some movie director. His idea was "all sites should have something cover page, when you visit it for first time you should see it. Even see this page every time on your visits as initial.". I was WTF?

[EGOL]

Even the tiny businesses that I run have a diversity of clients and types of clients.   Far too many to summarize well in one short video.   I believe that the message should be customized different types of clients.

If I was making videos they would be one click below the homepage.  There I would post very short videos that simply present the product range, the value propositions that we offer our clients, and the support that we provide to help clients be successful.  What we do for YOU.

Each business service or major product category would have one of these videos.

Instead of showing the CEO's face in these videos, I think it would be better to feature the staff members who will do the actual work and interface with the clients.  Show staff in the work areas and offices where client work is accomplished.  The goal is to show the experts who offer their skills and services and the assets that we have to accomplish the work.

How long?   Two or three minutes.

I think it would be better to cover a limited range of information.  That way the video is relevant to the listener's interests and not go into services that are not what the visitor has clicked into.

[RobertFisher]

I appreciate this and that you added two to three minutes. I was trying to avoid detail for fear of contaminating people's opinions. My discussion came up with a service business that wanted what we call an explainer video. In other words: this is the problem, this is the solution, and this is why we are the choice. 
Typically, I do not like these to run beyond 90 seconds and feel like anything closer to 60 seconds is better. The one for this client is animated, but we have another client who does videos and "stars" in them. They tend to be longer and, in agreement with your first point, I think they lose people.

Thanks again, EGOL,

Robert

[ThompsonPaul]

The answer to this would have to be "it depends" but in general my opinion would be a home page explainer should be 30-60 seconds.

But this is a clear situation where opinions or personal preferences are useless - let the data tell you what the visitors demand. This question screams for split testing - or at the very least doing close Analytics tracking  via events to know how many even start the video, how long they watch, and whether they watch to the end.

Just showing the client that - say - fewer than 20% watch the video past 30 seconds would settle the discussion pretty quickly.

My $0.02

Paul

[Houses]

When I worked in the newspaper industry and they started to use video, we were always told to keep it to under a minute and a half - I think if you go beyond that then people lose interest. Even so, if you go to the full time it has to be interesting throughout. The shorter the better really and don't do it for the sake of it - it has to add something for the viewer.