- Ryan Prosser
- July 4, 2022
- Estimated reading time: less than two minutes
Nowadays everyone creates videos. Everyone has a smartphone with a camera and video recorder in their pocket. But with so many minutes of video content being uploaded every minute of every day, it’s harder than ever to stand out and engage people. Captions are an easy and effective way of boosting traffic and widening your outreach by enhancing the user experience. Here’s why.
How do video captions improve engagement?
Videos themselves stand out on a web page, namely because they produce sound and moving pictures. But a surprisingly large number of people watch videos muted, even in private places. A study in the US found that in public places 69% of viewers watch videos with the sound off, along with 25% in private. Moreover, 80% of respondents said they “were more likely to watch an entire video” if captions were available.
Captions also extend video watch times. This is for three key reasons. Firstly they enable users to watch your content anywhere, including in places where having the sound up is not possible (either because it’s too noisy or to not disturb others). Secondly captions focus users’ attention, which is of course known to drift. If you see words on a video you are much more likely to stop and look rather than scroll on. Lastly but not least, it makes your content more accessible to other user groups, such as those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
But video captions don’t just keep viewers hooked, they get them there in the first place. By adding subtitles to your videos you can boost your SEO and get your website up the Google or Youtube pecking order. Subtitles also help your videos rank for keywords that are not in its title or description.
What about transcripts?
While captions improve the viewing experience, transcripts expand your outreach of your videos to those who don’t or haven’t got the time to watch them. Trawling through a long video to find just the quote you need is both tedious and time consuming. Transcription makes scanning through content a whole lot easier. Transcripts are also handy for creating blog posts, which in turn increase SEO and drive up your website traffic.
Transcripts like captions enhance the overall viewer experience. They also act as subliminal reinforcement of the message you are trying to get across, so the user retains more if they both hear and read it.
How to improve your videos with transcripts
By this point you are probably wondering “How do I do all this?” This is where JUST Access comes in. For a guaranteed 100% accurate and reliable transcription service use JUST transcription, with subtitles provided for just £2.00 a minute.
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