Page Speed or Size?

[WillWatrous]

Hi everyone. I have a client who really wants to add a 1min html5 video to the background of their homepage. I have managed to reduce the size of the video to 20MB and I have tested the page in pingdom. The results are 1.85 s to load, and weighed in at 21.2 MB.

My question is does Google factor page load speed or size in it's ranking factors?

I am also mindful of the negative effect this could have on bounce rate.

Thanks.

[RyanPurkey]

Page speed is a factor. But the video / moving banner thing has been a popular design feature of late--see https://www.paypal.com/home as an example, and wait a bit for the banner image to move--but even a company with bandwidth like Paypal doesn't make the animation overly long. They also achieve their look and feel prior to the animation. In one example, here's the video as a stand alone: https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/en_US/mktg/wright/videos/OneTouchCity.mp4  It's only 10 seconds long and 2.1MB vs 21.2MB.  You might be able to use this example with your client as a company that is highly focused on quickly loading pages and caution against including an element that would cause the whole page to suffer as a result.  Also, making watching the video an event in Analytics would tell you how many people are really interested in seeing it, versus those visitors who are not.

[WillWatrous]

Thanks for the detailed response Ryan.