Your conversion rate increases over 80% if you include a product video on your landing page, according to research from Insivia. There is no doubt that videos play a key role in enhancing visitors, increasing their time on your site as well as making your site more lively, which results in better SEO scores.
It’s super easy to embed a video to your site, WordPress in particular. Simply copy and paste the link on a page or post, WordPress will fetch it automatically. If you’re using Gutenberg, you may be surprised how simple it is to include a video by adding a video block to upload and embed it.
Your WordPress video features shouldn’t just stop there. Do you know that you can still make the process even faster and easier with support from third-party plugins? While some plugins help you upload and create video galleries, others assist in protecting your videos from unauthorized users.
There are thousands of plugins supporting video management available on the WordPress repository. To help you separate the wheat from the chaff, I’ve ranked and reviewed the top 5 most popular and effective plugins for you to choose from. Read on to check them out!
Why Using a Plugin to Manage Videos?
As mentioned, plugins add additional powerful functions to your WordPress videos and create a better experience for your users.
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Create a better experience for users
A gallery helps present your videos much easier. Users can search and sort videos on a specific topic. Some plugins even enable you to build your own video channel and at the same time allow viewers to share and comment on each video.
This affects the user experience possibly. They can easily move to the next related video after finishing one without having to search around. Viewers are also able to leave their thoughts on a specific video. There is an option for them to make payment for the rest after watching the first video too.
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Protect video content of online courses
You need to protect your videos when offering them as paid training materials. It’s unfair for paid students if unpaid members don’t have to pay for the course but can access these videos for some reason.
WordPress has no built-in feature to secure your videos. You have to install a file protection plugin or ideally a video access restriction solution. It allows you to stop video sharing among paid members and others without your permission.
You have numerous choices when it comes to plugins for video management and protection. It’s necessary to pick the ones that best fit your demands. Below are the top 5 plugins that are worth your consideration.
Plugin to Protect WordPress Videos
Video security must be taken into account due to the value they bring to your site as well as your business. Protect WordPress Videos & Audios plugin authorized users to view your videos without downloading them, even if they’re using tools like IDM. This feature best supports online course sites that provide training materials via video and audio format.
The plugin protects your video by replacing the original URLs with private download links and expiring these links after every 5 seconds. A new link will be created right after the previous one expires to make sure the plugin runs smoothly.
With the Gutenberg WordPress block compatible capability, it’s extremely easy to embed your videos to any pages or posts. On top of that, the plugin supports HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) videos to offer better playing quality and experience for viewers.
What if your video is not hosted on WordPress? Don’t worry! Protect WordPress Videos & Audios plugin auto-secures all videos hosted on Amazon S3 bucket.
One thing you should notice is that it requires you to install the main Prevent Direct Access Gold plugin to have this plugin work.
Plugins for the Video Gallery
Compared to video protection plugins, you have more choices when seeking a solution for video galleries. We recommend Vimeography, Youtube Embed, WP Video Lightbox, and Easy Video Layer as the best ones. Read on to understand why.
#1 Vimeography
Vimeography serves membership, course, and portfolio sites as the most powerful video gallery plugin. It allows you to style your own Netflix website in less than 30 seconds.
You don’t have to add videos to your gallery manually since the plugin will automatically do that. You can include a gallery on a page, post, or template without any hassle too. In addition to that, there are theme options for you to customize how your gallery looks and feels.
The featured video capability enables you to display the first video as the largest one for users to watch. It’s also possible for you to use pixels and percentages to manage the video gallery width.
#2 YouTube Embed
Trusted by over 10 thousand site owners, YouTube Embed works as a video embedder to add Youtube videos to your WordPress site. It will create a playlist based on usernames or searches.
What’s more, the plugin helps resize your videos for more responsiveness. You don’t need to feel stressed out if your videos are too big or take a lot of page area.
In terms of SEO, YouTube API will provide data for Google metadata to add metadata to your video. The plugin works compatible with Video SEO for WordPress to display its options under your YouTube Embed menu. This creates a seamless experience so that you can adjust SEO factors without going anywhere else.
#3 WP Video Lightbox
The number of active installations already indicates how powerful the plugin is. WP Video Lightbox assists over 60 thousand users around the world to embed videos to a page via a lightbox overlay display. Unlike the previous plugins which just support Vimeo or Youtube, WP Video Lightbox helps present all images, flash, YouTube, Vimeo, and iFrame.
You can use several shortcodes to add videos to your WordPress page or post, depending on your video types, Vimeo or Youtube. The best use of this plugin is thumbnail image optimization. By adding a shortcode with the “alt” parameter, search engines will understand what your image is about easier.
There are a lot more you can do with WP Video Lightbox, including animation speed, auto-play slideshow, default width and height, and hidden flash.
#4 Easy Video Player
Easy Video Player primarily enables you to show videos, from self-hosted to externally hosted ones on your WordPress site. The plugin brings a great user experience on both desktop and mobile devices. Your videos will be embedded under HTML5 format with a poster image and in mute status.
It’s effortless to set up the plugin. All you need to do is turn on the “Enable jQuery” feature in order to make use of the jQuery library. Once set up, you can copy the following shortcode to add a video to your page.
[evp_embed_video url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/videos/myvid.mp4"]
Remember to replace the example URL with your desired video link. You have other shortcodes for video auto-play, size control, video loop, and player templates as well.
Which Plugin For Your WordPress Video?
Video content drives tons of traffic to your site and affects the visitor experience. While WordPress makes it easy to upload a video to your site, you should also seek help from an additional plugin to maximize their functionalities.
If you’re offering an online course site or building an LMS community, it’s significant to protect your videos from shady visitors and organize videos in galleries for a better appearance.
While Protect WordPress Videos and Audios plugin secures your WordPress videos by blocking people from downloading them, the rest plugins support you in building up a good-looking video gallery. You can add self-hosted or externally hosted videos to your WordPress site with ease.
Share with us your favorite plugin in the comment section below.
