YouTube vs. Swarmify
Swarmify is a powerful video hosting alternative to YouTube, free of traffic leaks and distractions
Videos are an effective way to make your website more engaging and interesting. However, it’s important to choose the right video platform and solutions, in order to deliver a positive User Experience (UX) that reduces bounce rates.
YouTube is one of the most popular video platforms on the planet. Unfortunately, while it may be a sufficient option for sharing video content, it’s not necessarily the best choice if you’re looking to showcase videos free of third-party branding and other distractions. That’s where Swarmify comes in.
In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of providing a distraction-free video experience. Then we’ll compare YouTube versus Swarmify SmartVideo (an on-site video player), highlighting how the latter is better for keeping videos free from third-party branding. Let’s get started!
Delivering a distraction-free video experience is critical for engagement
Featuring marketing videos on your website can be a powerful and effective way to engage visitors. In fact, marketing videos can increase conversions by 80 percent.
However, videos are of little use when they don’t load properly or are cluttered with links, ads, and other distractions. Users today expect a speedy, seamless browsing experience online. If your site or the videos on it lag, or take more than a second or two to load, that can result in a higher bounce rate. It also reflects poorly on your brand, and can make you look both unprofessional and unreliable.
Why use video players that are plagued by pesky, third-party ads? Whether appearing at the beginning, middle, or end of your video, paid advertisements can be a distraction. Some may even promote your competitors.
The marketing videos you use on your website should be about your brand, not the video platform you’re using or the brands (such as your competitors) that are paying to advertise on them. Therefore, to deliver the best video experience possible, it’s essential to eliminate distractions so your visitors are able to focus on the core message of your videos.
YouTube vs. Swarmify: key differences to consider
There’s no denying the prominence of YouTube in today’s digital landscape. Since its inception in 2005, it’s been one of the most popular video platforms. It also includes a wide variety of features for hosting, sharing, and promoting videos online. However, while the platform itself certainly has its perks, there are some areas where YouTube is lacking.
Fortunately, Swarmify provides professional video hosting as a YouTube alternative. In addition to a global Content Delivery Network (CDN), we offer a SmartVideo player that makes adding, converting, and managing videos in WordPress incredibly easy:
Global video cdn
Whether your customers are across the world or just down the street, your video starts fast. Instant-start, buffer-proof.
Optimized encoding for all devices
Your customers get video optimized for their device to deliver the best experience. Worry free and automatically updated for new devices.
Clean, distraction free player
Make more sales, and reduce bounce rates by keeping visitors focused on your brand. Giant logos and related videos are designed to take away your customers.
YouTube siphons traffic and displays third-party ads
The reason you’re able to use YouTube videos for free is that the platform makes money from customers, who are paying to have advertisements appear in the videos you embed on your site. These ads include:
• Banner overlays
• Video ads
• Related content suggestions at the end of your video
These ads can be quite a distraction, and possibly irritating to customers who simply want to watch the video. In addition, the paid ads may link to your competitors:
There is a way to turn off these ads. However, YouTube is regularly coming up with new ways to monetize free video embeds, and staying on top of the changes to its features can be tricky, tedious, and time-consuming.
Aside from the ads and links, there are also the multiple icons, buttons, and logos featuring YouTube’s branding:
Put simply, using YouTube can make keeping your branding clean from third-party services challenging. However, with Swarmify, this is not a concern.
Unlike YouTube and other platforms that clutter videos with links that siphon away your traffic, our SmartVideo player is clean of distractions:
The minimalist video player is clean and fully customizable. When you use it to publish videos on your site, you won’t have to worry about traffic leaks or unwanted elements.
Our SmartVideo Platform has instant-start and stall-free playback
YouTube makes it easy to embed marketing videos on your site for free. The problem is that ‘free’ actually does come at a price; that cost is often a sluggish and disruptive experience.
The resource-intensive processes involved in incorporating and displaying these ads are not only a distraction; they can also lead to slower loading times. On the other hand, SmartVideo player has:
• Instant-start that begins playback 12x faster than other video players
• Continuous streaming optimization, to prevent failures from occurring during the video-watching experience.
• Stall-free playback that minimizes and even eliminates buffering, ultimately decreasing bounce rates
We host your videos on our global CDN, and use video acceleration and a proprietary EdgeAI technology:
This alleviates the issues associated with slow startup times and playback stall-outs, enabling you to deliver a smooth, seamless video experience.
YouTube and other video players are often filled with bloat that can negatively impact the playback experience. However, our SmartVideo player isn’t bogged down by ad code or heavy user tracking mechanisms that hurt page loading speeds. In fact, our lightweight player loads in a mere 64 milliseconds, while YouTube’s player usually takes about 750 milliseconds.
SmartVideo automatically converts YouTube embeds, then encodes and stores your videos for playback
Uploading your content to a new video hosting platform can be a major headache. At Swarmify, we make it simple. Our SmartVideo player automates the most difficult tasks. All of the encoding, storage, and CDN delivery occurs automatically, and you can auto-migrate your YouTube and Vimeo videos.
You can use SmartVideo for both new and existing videos. Once added to your website, it scans your content for any YouTube videos, and converts them to SmartVideo instead. In addition to YouTube, you can also use it with other video services, including Vimeo, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
Finally, SmartVideo is incredibly easy to install on your WordPress site. You can manage the video player directly from your WordPress dashboard, without having to interact with any JavaScript or your site’s core files.
Swarmify support is here to help you solve problems quickly
Another key difference between YouTube and Swarmify is customer support. If you ever run into a problem managing a YouTube video on your site, it’s important to know that YouTube offers next to no support.
If you run into issues with the YouTube video player, you’re left to scour Google and support forums to find answers to your questions. As we mentioned earlier, you’re not technically YouTube‘s customer; the brands that are paying to advertise are the real customers. Therefore, you can’t expect to receive premium support from this platform.
At Swarmify, on the other hand, our support team is always ready to lend a hand with any question or concern you may have. In addition to our thorough documentation, you can send us a chat message through our website. Whether you have an inquiry about the setup process or another aspect of using the SmartVideo player, we’re here to help you at every step of the way.
Get started with Swarmify and keep your on-site videos free from YouTube’s branding
If you’re ready to use a video player that will successfully keep your on-site videos free from YouTube branding, we have you covered. To get started with Swarmify, the first step is to sign up for a SmartVideo account.
We offer a handful of pricing plans to suit every budget and size. All of our plans come with unlimited bandwidth, storage, and encoding, as well as priority support.
Once you create an account, you’ll have access to your SmartVideo dashboard. This is where you’ll find your Swarm CDN key, which you can use to activate the SmartVideo plugin on your WordPress site:
Unlike YouTube and other third-party platforms, Swarmify offers a simple way for you to keep your on-site videos free from third-party branding.
Sign up for a SmartVideo account today and see for yourself how easy it can be to deliver a clean, distraction-free video experience for your visitors!