YouTube is a hugely useful resource for the hosting of your videos but it has become a bit shouty about poaching our website’s visitors. Let’s put a stop that
When we embed a YouTube video in our website, it comes with a lot of furniture which at best, is a little distracting but at worst, takes visitors away from our site. Obviously, YouTube lets us have free video hosting because of the traffic our videos attract but YouTube wants those viewers watching on its site, not ours.
Regardless of whether you use the native, Gutenberg block in your WordPress website, a third-party plugin or hand-code the HTML, the results are much the same. The video cover comes with a collection of call-to-action buttons all of which take our visitors away to YouTube.
We have no control over the furniture that YouTube puts on our video cover. It is great that YouTube lets us put our own, custom-made card on the front of our videos but not so good that it then sticks so much over the top. If you have taken the time and trouble to create a cover card such that none of YouTube’s furniture is obscuring your design, that’s great.
Clear the furniture
Except that YouTube might decide next week to change the size, shape and or position of its gargantuan ‘Watch on YouTube’ button. Or, indeed, add or alter any number of buttons overlayed on your video. But what if you could have complete control over what appears on your video covers?
The two videos you see embedded here are, in fact, the same one on YouTube but the one immediately above is embedded via the Presto Player plugin. The free version of this plugin removes all of YouTube’s furniture and lets you add your own cover page and offers a number of options for the player controls. The premium offers even more options.
Get in touch to learn more
If you’d like advice on embedding YouTube videos in your WordPress website then fill in the form below and we’ll get back to you, we’ll be happy to help.