You’re probably making this mistake with your videos is a short YouTube advice video by Jaime Smith (uploaded May 16, 2023) warning that browser autoplay often mutes audio—causing viewers to miss the opening "hook." The speaker recommends using a video player/hosting setting that restarts playback at the beginning when a viewer turns on sound. Specific tool recommendations in this chunk: Vimeo (with a Vimeo Autoplay add-on via Sierra Pro Tools) and Wistia (has a setting).
Chapters
Don't let them miss the hook. Most video players, if you want to set it to autoplay in the browser, it's going to play motion, but it's going to turn the sound off and people are not going to be able to hear what you have to say, especially at the hook, especially at the beginning. Now, they can click to turn the sound on, but a lot of times it's just going to continue on where you were, where they were already at in the video. So they might be a minute into the video already before they ever hear the first word. So you need to make sure that your video player that you use in your hosting service actually has a setting to be able to restart the video video at the beginning when somebody turns on the sound. So you it's great to have the motion play because it captures attention, but it needs to restart at the beginning. Now, Vimeo is my recommended hosting service. They don't do this out of the box. But if you're using Sierra Pro Tools, you can use the Vimeo Autoplay add on and that will actually, when they click turn on the sound, it'll actually restart the video at the beginning. I highly recommend using that. We also have one for YouTube. If you're using YouTube, Wistia has a setting that you can do it out of the box. With Wistia, it's just not as pretty. So give it a shot.
