I’ll be the first to tell you. I’m not creative.
But going along with the “above the fold is dead” theme, one of the big website design fads right now is having a site with a moving video as the background.
I seem to get calls every week. “Can you build me a site like Sotheby’s or AirBnB?”
The answer is Yes I can.
IF you can supply me with the raw video I can. It’s also going to cost a little extra than my normal fees, but hey, you want STUNNING – right?
I’m actually playing right now on a test platform of mine (CustomPageApps.com). I don’t use the site for much these days so I tend to test things there.
Right now, if you are on the home page you’ll see a background video of cats. I originally made that video for WordPress.org for a project I was working on. I stopped by a local animal rescue with my GoPro and tossed in a cage. Simple stuff, eh?
I stripped the sound because it’s just meant to be a background.
Almost.
If you are on a desktop – you’ll see a video. If you are on something smaller you’ll just see a picture. It’s smart like that.
Why? Because as short as the video is – it’s 21.8MB in size.
It’ll load quick enough on broadband but for those on a less than ample carrier signal (3g, 4g etc) it’ll take longer as well as use up their broadband and that just not good design – right?
To do this right, it’s not as simple as tossing a video embed code into a widget. There’s some .php work, a bit of CSS, and creating the right kind of file(s) for the video itself.

But you know what? It’s fun to create new things!
(Totally NOT SAFE FOR WORK video of Alec Baldwin’s speech Always Be Closing)
We can talk about my AIDA next time. 🙂
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