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- Once your video is posted on your website,
on social media, or wherever else you might want it seen,
you'll want to check some of the analytics
to make sure your video is doing what you want or need.
What analytics you have access to will greatly depend
on where and how you host your video.
Sites like YouTube will give you different data metrics
than sites like Wistia or other hosting sites.
And if you're not using a hosting service,
you'll want to make sure that you have some way
of collecting data around your video.
As you start looking at the data for your videos,
you should define what you're trying to know
and make sure that these data points
will really help you know what you're looking at.
For instance, are you interested
in how many people watch the video?
Are you trying to figure out how many
or what percent of people watch the entire video?
Or maybe, you're looking to determine if the link
or hotspot you included in your video was clicked on?
It's impossible for us to look at every scenario,
but let's look at a few common pieces of data
that you may have access to,
and a few common ways that data might be helpful.
First, and usually one of the easiest pieces of data
to gather is the number of times your video has been played.
The actual play number may not be super helpful,
but it does give a quick and easy look
to make sure your video is working
and that viewers are starting it.
If you're not getting the numbers you expect,
maybe there is an issue with playback,
or the video isn't being discovered.
A similar stat is the unique number of plays.
This is the number of individual devices
that have started the playback.
The number ignores when the video has been played back
additional times from the same people.
Overall, this may not be a super useful number,
other than to give you a sense
of how many people are watching the video multiple times
when compared to the overall play rate.
There may be a number of reasons
someone would watch a video multiple times.
Is it because it's interesting, enjoyable, and/or useful?
Was there confusion that required multiple viewings?
Understanding those answers will require more digging in
but playback starts
to help put these questions into perspective.
The next stat that's fairly ubiquitous, is watch time.
The watch time takes the amount
of time every viewer has watched.
So for instance, if 10 people watch a one-minute video
for the full minute,
you would have a watch time of 10 minutes.
If someone watches for less then the full duration
that the time is added, so for example,
if 1 of the 10 viewers only watched for 30 seconds,
the watch time would be 9 minutes and 30 seconds.
One way of looking at watch time is as the cumulative amount
of time viewers have invested into your video.
While there may not be a lot you can determine
by overall watch time, it can be a good stat to check
to see how it changes over time.
Also, if you're publishing on YouTube, it's a key factor
in getting your video a better ranking in search.
The next item is audience retention or engagement,
and is a key stat that you'll want to look at.
Audience retention is how much of your video,
on average, viewers watch.
This is usually depicted as a line graph that will go up
and down as more or less people watch.
The line goes down as people stop watching,
and up if people watching parts multiple times.
The goal is to have as many people watch the video
until the end as possible.
As you're looking at audience retention,
watch for sudden changes.
Most videos will have a quick drop off
in the first 5 or 10 seconds,
and then usually a slow steady decline.
However, if you see other sudden drops in retention,
you may want to look at your video.
Did something happen
that would cause viewers to stop watching?
You'll also want to look
for any place where the retention goes up.
There could be lots of reasons
for the increase of retention,
maybe something funny happened that people re-watched,
or maybe it was visually interesting.
On the other hand, maybe something went too quickly
or was confusing and the viewers needed to watch it again
to make sense of what they are seeing.
The audience retention graph helped me identify a problem
with one of the videos I worked on here at TechSmith.
We shot a commercial in the style of the television show 24.
It was quick action,
with lots of changes and movement on the screen.
In the short story,
a scene depicted a character having success
and an audience clapping at the 39th second of the video.
This is when a large number of viewers stopped watching.
However, the video had another 12 seconds to play,
which include the name of the product,
and the call to action.
This was a huge missed opportunity
and required us to make changes to ensure
that we didn't miss future opportunities with our viewers.
We never would have known about this problem
without the audience retention data.
There is other data that you can obtain
from your video host.
Each host may provide similar metrics,
including viewer demographics, traffic sources,
viewer geography, playback locations, and more.
There are a lot of reasons you should look at all
of the data available to you.
Some of it might give you insights about your audience,
which can inform you about the next video you create.
You may find information
that helps you make better decisions
about the type of video, maybe the content,
or even the location you post it.
As you look through your data,
remember the questions you asked.
Does this data help you make sense
to be able to answer those questions?
If so, are there changes or adjustments you need to make
for this video or future videos?
And if the data isn't helping to answer your questions,
you'll have to figure out other ways to gather information,
which might include finding a way to talk to your viewers,
or providing them with a survey to get further insights.
One last thing to look at is what to do
if you don't have a video host that provides analytics?
If your host doesn't provide analytics
there's not a lot you can do.
You should look to see
if you can get similar data from other sources.
For instance, is the page your video on a web page
that is using Google Analytics?
You might be able to look at ancillary data
to draw some conclusions.
For instance, how many views does that page get,
and what is the average page view time?
It won't be perfect, but it can help you see
if viewers are generally watching the video.
If you're posting your video to another system,
like a learning management system or blog,
you may find that that system has data
that might also be useful in understanding viewer behavior.
As we wrap-up,
make sure you're looking at the data that you have.
Use it to help you make better decisions
about your next video.
If you have no data to go from,
you'll need to find ways to get some.
Post a survey or find ways to talk to your viewers.
Having data will not only help you make better videos,
but it will help you understand
the impact your video is having for your audience
and for your organization.