Avoid video and animated image abuse

One cancer I've seen sweeping Shopify stores is the abuse of video and animated images.

It's so lovely to visit a page and have my phone start to smolder or my computer fans to scream, just because there's a poorly optimized video playing something on the page. Especially when those are set as the featured image.

I know a picture is worth 1,000 words and a video is a 1,000 pictures but whenever I see an auto-playing video the only words I hear are "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I'M SPECIAL! LOOK, LOOK, LOOK"

Not the best way to keep a potential customer on the page. Not to mention the performance impact to your site and SEO.

Want to use a video? No problem, wait for a visitor to play it.

Want to use an animated gif? Okay, but it has to be optimized. Don't know if it's optimized? Then you should learn about that before using it.

Some might argue that videos and moving images will help engagement and conversions. They sure do, because the force the visitor to engage by clicking away or rushing away from the image.

At the same time they'll piss off a group of potential customers, annoy another group, and your pages will perform poorly hurting your SEO. Additionally, unless you've A/B tested those against static or click-to-play versions there's a chance they hurt conversions anyways.

Keep your gifs optimized and small.

Keep your videos click-to-play.

And for heavens sake, don't make a video the background on your damn homepage.

Your customers and their wallets will thank you.