If you’ve been trying to increase the effectiveness and audience engagement of your video content, you probably realize that it’s becoming more challenging — whether you’re using the videos for educational purposes, corporate training and development, customer care, or marketing.
The popularity of interactive videos is on the rise. In fact, 70% of marketers say interactive video engages audiences “well” or “very well” while 64% of consumers would spend more time on a video if they could interact with the content.
Additionally, in a survey of Learning and Development professionals, 77% think personalized learning is vital to employee engagement.
Instead of passively watching a video, today’s audience expects a dynamic experience that’s engaging and relevant. This is the age of personalized experiences, and interactive video allows you to create a personalized video path that evolves based on the viewers’ choices and preferences.
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What’s Interactive Video?
Traditional linear videos have limited functions, such as play, pause, rewind, fast forward, or restart. There isn’t much that viewers can do with the content to enrich their experience.
On the other hand, viewers can have more control over their experience in an interactive video through a variety of tools and features. For example, they can click, drag, scroll, hover, and gesture to complete different digital actions — similar to how we interact with website content.
Most commonly used interactive video features include hotspots, 360-degree view, video quizzes and video paths. These features can deliver highly personalized and relevant content to augment the viewing experience.
The Benefits of Using Interactive Videos
Interactive videos can be used in a variety of contexts, such as education, corporate training and development, as well as for customer care, e-commerce, and marketing.They are popular among brands and consumers, accounting for 36% of all video content being produced.
Here are the benefits of using interactive videos:
- Personalized experience: viewers can play an active role by selecting their learning paths and preferred actions to get the most relevant information delivered in a way that suits their learning style.
- Deeper engagement: memorable experiences can capture the viewers’ attention and help them better retain information. In fact, people spend 44% longer watching interactive videos than they do linear ones and are 3 times more likely to engage with the content.
- Game-like experience: the active experience that involves viewers’ participation in shaping the user path can result in as much as 591% lift in user activity — a boost that’ll give any marketing campaign an advantage.
- Increased conversion: conversion is an important KPI for most marketing initiatives and interactive videos are found to convert at a rate of over 11% (compared to annotations, which convert at 1%.)
- Audience insights: the various actions viewers take when viewing a video (e.g., clicks, form fields, user paths) can be analyzed to gain a deeper understanding of user preferences. They can also be used to track their progress and develop meaningful insights, so you can fine-tune the experience.
3 Main Types of Interactive Videos
Interactive videos can be applied to a large variety of contexts and for different purposes. Here are the 3 main categories:
Learning and Development
People have different learning styles and interactive videos allow users to choose their learning path according to their interest and pace of learning. This way viewers can play a more active role in their learning experience and shape a personalized experience in which they can determine the topics, the pace, and direction.
Whether it’s for educational programs, corporate training, or customer support, you can present content in a learner-friendly manner to deepen engagement and improve results. You can easily create, share and embed interactive video paths within your website, the Kaltura MediaSpace video portal, as well as within your Learning Management System (LMS) or any other Kaltura Application Framework, for a streamlined workflow and experience.
Here are a few ways interactive videos are used for learning and development:
- Sales training
- Skills and safety training
- Leadership coaching
Recruitment and Onboarding
It’s becoming more important to attract and retain the right talents in order to succeed in today’s competitive business environment.
Top companies are using interactive videos to deliver personalized and relevant content so they can connect with high-quality candidates, reduce the time-to-hire, and lower hiring cost.
Interactive videos are used to accelerate employee onboarding so new hires can become productive as quickly as possible. They can also deliver an outstanding employee experience that helps improve retention rate, which in turn lowers the cost associated with employee turnover.
Here are just a few ways corporations are leveraging the power of interactive videos:
- Recruiting and onboarding new employees
- Healthcare and benefits enrollment
- Ethics and compliance training
Marketing and Customer Experience
Today’s consumers expect real-time interactions and personalized experiences from brands. In fact, 80% of customers say they are more likely to purchase a product or a service from a brand that provides them with a personalized experience, and 40% say they have purchased items more expensive than planned thanks to personalized recommendations.
Interactive videos help deliver digital experiences that surprise and delight your customers to shorten the sales cycle and improve loyalty. When integrated with other marketing technologies, you can create a highly customized experience to increase conversion.
In addition, interactive videos can deliver an engaging brand experience that builds an emotional connection with customers. They can also provide relevant product information to increase customer satisfaction while lowering customer support cost.
You can use interactive videos in:
- Product selectors
- Product training and customer onboarding
- Product how-tos, demos, and customer support
Transform Your Videos with Interactive Elements
Adding interactive elements to all your videos may seem like a daunting task. Thankfully, with our interactive tools, you can easily create, embed, and share immersive personalized video experiences using either your existing content or new videos.
With features such as interactive video paths, video quizzes, hotspots, and other cutting-edge features, you can easily transform any video into an interactive video to create personalized experiences that increase engagement, enhance learning, and boost conversion.
Want to learn more about Kaltura’s interacitve video capabilities?
