How Much Multimedia Content Should You Have On Your Website?
One of the biggest advantages that online publishing has over print publishing is the ability to use multimedia content.
However an important question that every blogger and content website publisher must ask themselves is how much multimedia content do my audience want…if any?
During December I undertook a basic (and fairly unscientific) survey to find out what age groups watch and listen to multimedia content. I asked all the participants who were a wide mix of friends, family and colleagues with home and work/school internet access:
“Did you look at text, video and audio content in the previous month?”
The results were as follows:
| Age Range | Read Articles | Watched Video | Listened to Podcast |
| 0 - 15 | 60% | 90% | 10% |
| 16 - 25 | 100% | 100% | 30% |
| 26 - 40 | 100% | 80% | 30% |
| 40 - 65 | 100% | 60% | 20% |
| 65+ | 90% | 10% | 0% |
These figures are fairly predictable but have important implications for content publishers.
When considering whether to have multimedia content on your site and what mix you should have these are the questions that you should ask yourself:
- “What is the typical age of my target audience? Are they multimedia users?”
- “What is the age range?”
- “Do they have time to watch or listen to multimedia or do they want to quickly scan content?”
- “How do they access the site? Do they use mobile phone access?”
- “What are your competitors doing with multimedia?”
- “Does audio or video enhance the content or is text better?”
I am a big fan of multimedia content. I think it adds dynamism to most websites.
However I only believe that it should be used if the customer gets benefits and value beyond what they would get from a text article.
For example audio is great for interviews, conversations and story telling.
Video is good for presentations, demonstrations, product reviews, interviews, on location reports, course material and TV-style content presentation.
Don’t use multimedia for the sake of it. Use it to provide unique value to your customers.
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