Embedded Videos That End on a Competitor's Clip

The demonstration ends, and a rival begins

A two-minute demonstration plays on a product page: the item unpacked, set up and working, with the owner explaining each step. It is the best selling the page does.

Then it ends, and YouTube fills the frame with a grid of other videos. Some are unrelated, some are strangers' reviews, and one or two are a competitor's demonstrations of a similar product.

Nobody chose them for your page. YouTube picked them, the same way it picks the next video for anyone watching on its own site.

What the standard player brings with it

The embed code YouTube offers by default brings its own furniture into your page, and most of it points away from you:

• Suggested videos fill the frame when the video ends, chosen by YouTube rather than by you.
• The title bar across the top links to the video's own page on YouTube.
• The YouTube logo in the control bar opens the video on YouTube as well.
• Annotations added by whoever uploaded the video can link to other videos.

The first is the one that costs customers. A visitor who has watched to the end is at their most interested, and that is the moment the frame offers somewhere else to go.

The setting that stops suggestions

Under each video on YouTube, the Share button opens an Embed tab. Below the code is a box for showing suggested videos when the video finishes. Untick it before copying the code.

Unticking it adds rel=0 to the video's address inside the code. The player then finishes with a replay button instead of a grid of other people's videos.

The setting belongs to each copy of the embed code, not to your channel. Videos already on the site keep their old code until someone changes it.

The logo and the title

Three more settings, added to the code by hand, reduce the rest: one takes the logo out of the control bar, one hides the title bar before the video starts, and one keeps annotations off.

YouTube always leaves some way to open the video on its own site, which is fair, since the hosting is free. The aim is not to hide YouTube, only to stop it choosing what your customer sees next.

A developer can add all of them in one pass through the site, which takes far less time than finding the videos in the first place.

A worked example

A magician for hire performs at weddings, company dinners and children's parties from Squamish to Whistler, and takes most of his bookings through his website. The home page opens with a three-minute reel.

A wedding planner mentioned, kindly, that the reel ended on other magicians. He played it to the end and saw a grid of performers, two of them local, beside a famous television illusionist.

He found eleven videos on the site: the reel, eight short clips in blog posts, and two older clips on the children's party page whose code did not play on an iPad at all.

Every video now uses embed code with suggestions switched off. The blog clips are gathered into a playlist of his own, and the two old clips were replaced with current code.

Beside each video sits a short paragraph: the kind of show, its length, the ages it suits and how to book. The frame now ends on his act, and the next thing on the page is his booking form.

Checking every video on the site

Videos collect in places nobody remembers: old blog posts, a testimonials page, a news item from three years ago. List every page with a video before changing anything.

Open each page's source and search for youtube.com to catch old and new players. Code with rel=0 is fine; code without it needs the setting added. Then play each video to the end, on a computer and a phone.

Older pages may carry the embed code YouTube offered years ago, which plays through Flash. It shows the same suggestions, and it does not play on iPhones or iPads at all.

Videos pasted as a link

On WordPress, a video added by pasting its YouTube address on a line of its own uses the standard player, with suggestions on.

Those need replacing with full embed code, or a developer can add the setting to every embedded video on the site at once, so new posts are covered too.

A playlist of your own

If you want something to follow, embed a playlist of your own videos instead of a single one. When the first ends, the player moves to the next of yours.

Keep the playlist short and in a sensible order. Three clips that show different parts of the work say more than twelve that repeat each other.

Choose the last clip with care, since that is where the player stops.

The words beside the video

A video cannot carry the page alone. Many visitors keep the sound muted, in an office or on transit, and plenty never press play.

Put a short paragraph beside each video with the facts a customer needs: what it shows, what it costs or how to get a price, and how to book or buy.

Search engines read that text, not the video, and so do screen readers. If the video has speech, captions added on YouTube help everyone who cannot listen.

The counter-case

Some businesses want viewers to go on to YouTube, because they publish often and are building a following there. For them, a link to the channel is part of the plan.

And a video that only explains, such as how to care for something already bought, loses less at the end than a sales demonstration does.

Even so, a product page is the wrong place to hand viewers to strangers. Put the channel link elsewhere on the site, and let the demonstration end on your own product.

Going through the videos you have

1. List every page that holds a video.
2. Search each page's code for embedded players.
3. Untick suggested videos and replace the code.
4. Replace pasted links and old Flash code.
5. Play each video through to the end.
6. Group related clips into a playlist of your own.
7. Write the paragraph that sits beside each video.

Step five catches what the code search missed. Watching to the end, on a computer and a phone, shows exactly what a customer sees in the last second.

Before adding more players to one page, read six embedded videos on one testimonials page for what each one costs in loading time.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.