Video already accounts for the vast majority of consumer internet traffic and the trend is only accelerating. In 2025, it’s estimated that over 80% of all internet traffic will be video-related. This is due to the large size of the files, its role in captivating audiences, and its role behind most modern marketing strategies.
Even discounting the COVID times, the total time spent watching videos of various types on the internet has skyrocketed. The importance of clever video usage in the web environment is evident, and in this article, I delve into the challenges and benefits of integrating videography into modern websites.
Table of Contents
What It Means to Combine Web Development and Videography
When we approach a combination of web development and videography, it is a primary focus for us to craft an integral digital experience where video content is not a gimmick but a thoughtfully woven string into the fabric of the website’s design and functionality that creates a journey that our creative team designed.
It all starts with the storytelling. We create an experience that pulls in viewers, showcases offerings, and boosts engagement. And while the creative aspect of it all can go wild, we must be cautious because many technical pitfalls can damage this experience. The immersion and storytelling should not be impacted by slow load times, improper loading on different devices, and bad responsive design. We have to constantly balance the videographer’s art, our creative team’s vision of its representation, and the technical approach that enables it all.
The source material
Our job gets significantly more difficult without quality videos. While using stock/generic videos can sometimes work, our first discussion with clients aiming for a video-heavy website is about the video quality they provide us.
Technical execution
With the quality material ready, we can design the technical architecture for video storage and provide it to the end users. There are many different approaches to this issue; we prefer serving the videos from a dedicated video hosting platform like Mux and either creating just the right renditions for the website’s use cases or executing an Adaptive Bitrate Streaming approach.
That way, we can choose one of two options:
- Guarantee of visual fidelity while sacrificing a bit of network loading time
- Guarantee of super-fast loading time while sacrificing a bit of visual fidelity
Admin User Experience
One of the first worries for our clients usually is how they will learn how to upload the videos correctly and host them. This is all avoided by our custom-built adapters and extensions, both in Laravel and for WordPress websites, that work with a straightforward dashboard and file upload workflow. The magic is all happening in the background, and our clients only need to upload the file.
When there are requirements for more complex workflows, we add quality pickers and different aspect ratio file slots for responsive views, which leads us to:
Responsiveness
Depending on the nature of your industry, 77% of your audience might be viewing your website from their mobile devices. That is why it is very important to consider different aspect ratios when rendering videos and the limitations that Apple devices can cause in various situations.
Accessibility
Finally, our clients might need added transcriptions, subtitles, and other assistance tools added to the videos. We use existing video hosting titling capabilities and render it out with one of our web video render engines of choice.
Benefits of Combining Web Development and Videography
An astute observer may notice that our development team needs a bit of involvement to enable a high-quality and smooth experience for website administrators and their users. One could ask why bother at all.
Capturing Attention and Retaining Messages
As I mentioned earlier, videos are insane attention grabbers and it is known that viewers retain a significantly larger portion of a message from video compared to just text. We can in a fairly short time grab attention and convey complex messages this way.
Custom Workflows and Scalable Architecture
While this way comes with more upfront cost in the development phase of the website, it gives you, the client, a streamlined workflow, designed and custom built exactly for your need that can be expanded, modified and scaled nearly limitlessly.
Freedom from Third-Party Platforms
Another large impact is that you avoid being tied to third party platforms like Youtube, Vimeo or DailyMotion and their bitrate choices and loading times. Your videos load lightning fast at the bitrate and size of your choice from the regions closest to your end user.
Load Time Optimization
An interesting aspect here is the cost of video hosting and streaming. From our experience, most of our clients overestimate the amount of stream time their videos actually play, and a service like Mux has been shown to be an incredibly efficient platform cost-wise. Once clients start entering serious viewership numbers/numbers of hosted videos, Mux enables us to scale effortlessly.
Cost-Efficient Video Hosting
Finally, the largest benefit of a well made video heavy website is that it just looks cool. And that factor is noticed both by humans and Google algos. Landing pages with videos are significantly more likely to be ranked on the first page of Google rankings. A study from Moz found that pages with video tend to earn about three times more backlinks than those without. That extra visibility can lead to more organic traffic and stronger SEO over time. Likewise a cleverly executed and attention grabbing video website immediately leaves a striking first impression on your users.
Challenges of Combining Web Development and Videography
The main factor to consider when planning on executing a video-heavy website is technical expertise to execute complex workflows, integrate multiple platforms, and optimize resources for the required size/quality ratio.
Technical expertise
The team building your website needs to know the latest and most optimal approach for your use case. That is why it is essential that you have someone who will guide you around the pitfalls and provide you with the backend and frontend solution that will work as intended – unifying performance, functionality, and aesthetics.
At Ginger IT Solutions, we have done it through the years in many different ways and can guide you through the process effortlessly.
Choosing the Right Tech Stack for the Job
Our current choice for tech stack when building larger, custom projects where decoupled architecture is required is Laravel backend (with custom CMS or Statamic) with Next.js powering frontend or traditional Laravel with Blade templates when there is no need to introduce JavaScript framework to the project. We have also executed smaller projects where we integrated the workflow into WordPress. While it provides some difficulties because we are working inside the WP ecosystem, our experience was overall positive.
Understanding How Video Works on the Web
The team working on such websites needs to know PHP and JavaScript and needs to understand how video works on the web and how video is hosted and streamed on the web. There are plenty of small tricks of the trade that just become tribal knowledge of the agency, like in our case. We have the experience and the knowledge to execute these projects with little surprise.
Building Intuitive Dashboards
Creating the complex workflow in your website’s dashboard and abstracting the background pipeline so everything is nice and tidily hidden so you are not bothered with technical aspects is only one step. There is very often integration of more platforms on top of all this. Other content delivery networks, analytics, marketing platforms, and everything need to play nice and function exactly how you need it.
The Importance of Balancing Video Quality and Loading Speed
Finally, the things that you will notice, as well as your users, are the video quality and the loading speed. There will always be a balancing act, and our team is there to find what works best for your business. Sometimes, it is more important for the brand to have a high-fidelity gallery experience with high-quality videos and a loader in front of it to mitigate the waiting time. Usually, loading time is of much more importance and priority. We have done it all, and we understand what approach you need.
Case Study: WSF and Our Videography Collaboration
We executed a rework, and we are still maintaining the website for Washington Square Films, a New York and Los Angeles film production and management company.
Their website had one goal – to be a gallery experience for their art. From the first moment you enter the website, a full-size slider opens with the videos they chose to feature. You can visit their featured directors, look through their trailers, or scroll through their Film & TV section.
Different aspects of the abovementioned tricks are applied in all of these pages, from fixed bitrate video renditions to the Adaptive Bitrate Streaming approach. Some videos are auto-playing when entering the page; some are on the hover of a link, and some are hidden behind posters and loaded when you hover over a poster. Most of these videos have different aspect ratio cuts in order to be adequately rendered on various resolutions and ensure maximum responsiveness.
A spinner animation is applied only when network speed demands such a trick, and a smooth experience is enforced throughout the website.
The client requested that the backend of the website be in WordPress due to the CMS familiarity and lack of any other complex features, so we created a plugin for them that makes the entire workflow very simple. The client does everything from the WP Dashboard and does not need to think about other integrations that are happening in the background.
What Future Brings
The quality of video and its size is constantly rising, but for now it is not realistic to expect that websites will be able to utilize it properly. The loading speed is just too important for the average user experience.
The interactive video approach is already used on a couple of very well-known websites. Layering clickable elements on top of the video gives users additional interaction, sometimes even allowing them to choose video story paths. That is something that we have the technology and know-how to execute these days, and something, when appropriately used, can be very interesting. It definitely helps to immerse users even further and to retain them for longer.
AI, oh, the AI. Like every other type of content, the automation of creating AI-made videos and hyperproduction of not-quite-well-made content will increase. We are non-stop on the lookout for the next big AI offering, and while currently there is little that can be used to provide the quality of content we are targeting, we are always vigilant. The AI environment is changing fairly quickly, and a potential breakthrough can significantly impact both video creation and web development, so we are testing new models and tools nearly daily to see what can be created and how we can utilize them optimally.
Edit: With the Veo-3 we are seeing some incredible AI generated videos. These recent changes increase more than ever the importance of proper integration of videos into your websites. It seems that soon enough we will not need tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to create pro ad-level video content.
Final thoughts
Integrating web development and videography is a powerful strategy that elevates user experiences, drives engagement, and delivers measurable results for businesses.
At Ginger IT, we don’t just build websites – we shape digital experiences. Our team blends web development and videography to cover both sides of the equation: the technical foundation and the creative story. That means we can handle everything from fast, responsive code to the visuals that grab people’s attention.
By embedding video seamlessly into websites, we create dynamic platforms that captivate audiences and streamline communication. While challenges like complex workflows, subpar performance, and SEO impact can arise, our agency’s unique approach and expertise ensures these hurdles are met with efficient, creative solutions. For clients, that’s a win. Instead of juggling multiple teams, they get one partner who can handle the full picture.
Ready to Gingerize your website? Contact us today for a consultation and discover how we can craft a custom solution blending the best of web development and videography for your business. Let’s create something extraordinary together!
