We love videos, you love videos and everyone else loves videos so surely you can’t go wrong… WRONG!

Autoplaying videos on landing pages has become more and more popular over the last year or two it seems. It probably looked like a cool and innovative idea however, how cool is it really? Just because you think it’s cool doesn’t necessarily mean your visitors will think it’s cool.

Enough with the “cool” now!

These autoplaying videos that you believe are helping you stand out from the crowd could be killing your conversion rate and helping you stand out for all the wrong reasons. Here is why:

1. Simple… People Don’t Want It

The very simple answer is that people don’t want it and we have proof of this. After searching the keyword “autoplaying video” on Moz’s Keyword Explorer tool, the list of keyword suggestions literally made us laugh out loud.

As you can see, all the keyword suggestions have the word “stop” in them.

Need further proof?

After searching on Google with the same keyword as before, the following results returned under related searches.

Still not convinced? A quick Twitter search of the same keyword resulted in several negative tweets about autoplaying videos.

I can’t seem to click on a @CNN article without an ad video autoplaying, so, yeah, I’m done clicking on CNN articles. #uxdesign

— Ken Mansour (@KenMansour) November 15, 2016

This Chrome extension is a life-saver. Stops ALL autoplaying video content. Hallelujah!https://t.co/X1q81HeGaV — Madhu Menon (@madmanweb) November 13, 2016

If your website has autoplaying audio or video you deserve to be stabbed in the eyes with a rusty spork.

— Carl Draper (@explodingwalrus) November 11, 2016

If that last tweet doesn’t worry you… I don’t know what will!

2.    It Slows Down Loading Time

Another reason why autoplaying videos aren’t a good idea is because they can slow down the loading time of landing pages. Now I do have to admit that this isn’t the case with all autoplaying videos, as it depends how they are embedded. However, if yours has slowed down your page speed, I would advise to remove the autoplay and split test the conversion rate.

Not only does Google not like slow loading pages but users hate them too. Unless you are offering something that is simply irresistible, people are not going to hang around and wait. They will bounce from your landing page and straight onto a competitor’s site.

Can you call that a good user experience?

3.    It Detracts From The True CTA

Your landing page serves a purpose and that is to convert the users that have landed there. We encourage businesses to use videos on their landing pages to help in this process. If the user still isn’t convinced by the text, can’t be bothered to read the text on the landing page or wants to watch a demo of the product, a video is a good way to further entice them to convert.

An autoplaying video however adds another, and unnecessary, step in the conversion path because you are encouraging the user to watch the video first before they have seen the offer and CTA.

If the user has landed on the page and is greeted with an autoplaying video, they may not even notice the most important part of your landing page…. The CTA. Conversion funnels are best kept simple with as little steps as possible.

Adding another unnecessary step into the funnel will only delay conversions and possibly even stop them.

Conclusion

Video marketing is absolutely key in today’s marketing. In fact adding a video to your landing page can increase your conversion rate by 80%, as found by HubSpot.

The key point that I am making today is the difference between a landing page video that helps improve the user experience and an autoplaying video that is invasive and removes all choice from the user.

What do you think about autoplaying videos? Do you agree they are bad for user experience or do you believe they truly do help improve the experience?