A videographer’s website has one job above all others: get somebody watching your work quickly. Most get in the way. The showreel autoplays at full weight and stutters on mobile signal, the films are buried three menus deep, and the packages sit in a PDF nobody opens.
Here is how to fix that, without compromising on the quality of what you show.
Nobody waits for a showreel to buffer
Uploading a video file straight to your website and setting it to autoplay is the quickest way to make a page slow. Anyone on patchy mobile signal sees a loading wheel instead of your work, and plenty of them will not wait.
The better approach is to host your films on Vimeo or YouTube and load each one as a lightweight preview image until someone presses play. The full-quality video only loads when a visitor asks for it, so the page stays fast and the film still looks exactly as it should. If you want movement on the homepage, a short, heavily compressed silent loop does the job without the weight of a full showreel.
Lead with the films that sell
Most videographers make more than one kind of film: weddings, brand work, events, documentary. Decide which you want more of and lead with that. Everything else can sit a click away. A homepage that tries to show everything tends to sell nothing in particular.
Give every film its own page
A grid of thumbnails is not a portfolio. Give each film a page of its own with:
- The story behind it
- The venue or the client
- The credits, including the other suppliers
- A clear way to enquire
Those pages give Google something to find, especially when couples search for a venue or businesses search for a type of film. They give the next client a reason to stay and watch, and credited suppliers a reason to link back to you. Adding video markup to each page helps search engines understand exactly what is on it.
Packages people can understand
Clear packages with a starting price filter out mismatched budgets before they cost you an evening of emails, and give the right clients the confidence to get in touch. Put them on a page, not in a PDF.
An enquiry form that asks the right questions
Date, location, type of film and budget, asked in the form. Less back-and-forth, and a clear picture before the first call. If the form can feed into the booking system you already use, even better.
Use your stills too
Frame grabs and behind-the-scenes photographs make film pages richer and give you images to share on social without cutting another edit. Aerial footage and photography can lift both, and they are something we shoot ourselves.
Where to start
If your homepage is slow on a phone, start there. It is the cheapest fix with the biggest effect. After that, film pages and search tend to bring in the most new work.
We build video-first websites and handle SEO, branding, ads and email for wedding and commercial videographers. Websites start from £350. See how we work with videographers, or send us your showreel.
