10 Elements Every Successful Video Website Homepage Needs

If you want to build a video website homepage that stands out, you’ve come to the right place.

At Uscreen, we spend a lot of time looking at video websites. We dissect them. We look at the data. We gather feedback. We get insights from our developers and success team.

The result?

We’ve found 10 elements that all high-converting homepages have that make them stand out from the competition. In this article, we’re going to walk you through each of them.

Let’s go…

How To Build The Perfect Homepage

First, you’ll need a page builder; this is a tool that lets you construct and customize the pages on your website without having to code. 

Finding a powerful page builder is the foundation for every other strategy in this post. A good page building tool lets you:

• Add your own branding and design.
• Customize all the pages in your website code-free.
• Work from well-designed templates.
• Add and edit code for more customization (if you want to).

If you’re a Uscreen customer, then we’ve got you covered! You can do all of these things with our built-in landing page builder that you can use to build your perfect homepage, from scratch. 

You can choose between intuitive predesigned templates…

…and customize each page as you see fit!

Ideally, your website builder should let you build any landing page for your website, including your: 

• Homepage.
• FAQ page.
• Sales pages.
• Free trial page. 
• Gift card or other promotional landing pages. 
• Email capture or ‘lead magnet’ landing pages.

Now you know how you’ll create your homepage and what you need to look for in a page builder.

It’s time to get into what you should have on your homepage…

1. Consistent Branding With Your Marketing Channels

Your potential customers will probably come to your website from a third-party platform, like social media, YouTube, or paid advertising.

When people click through to your site they’re subconsciously looking for confirmation that they’re in the right place. If they get that, they’ll stick around. If they don’t, they’ll leave.

The way they find this confirmation is by looking to see if your branding is consistent. They want to see that your…

• logo
• brand colors
• typography 

…are a match for what they’ve seen on other platforms. Take a look at how The Coaches Voice Academy do this across all of their platforms here:

This consistency creates a feeling of safety and will convince them to stick around to learn more about your video website. This is where the next element comes into play.

2. An Attractive Hero Image

It’s important to have a high-quality, eye-catching image at the top of your page. It plays a big role in the visual branding of your website and provides more context for your site.

Think of this as a quick glimpse into your premium content, one that will show your website visitors what’s in store if they convert into paying customers.

For example: 

BFUNK uses an image from one of their video dance classes to give visitors a sneak peek of what their premium content looks like.

You can also see how they’ve carefully chosen an energetic image – filled with happy and engaged customers – to give visitors a positive connection to their brand. 

Be sure to steer clear of stock images – they’ll generalize your brand and make it easily forgettable.

Instead, stick to brand images that accurately represent your content niche, to create that brand-to-consumer connection that’ll keep them coming back. 

3. An Effective VOD Description

Your VOD description is the elevator-pitch for your video business. It’s all of the text in the area people see before they scroll down on your homepage.

It should be…

• clear
• attention-grabbing
• informative
• actionable 

…like From The Field’s description here:

This instantly gives you a sense of what their service does and what you can expect if you stick around to watch their content. It attracts the right people, and signals for the rest to leave.

Visitors immediately know that this streaming service is for:

• Small-scale farmers (whether new or seasoned in the agriculture industry).
• Farmers who want to grow their skills.
• Farmers who want to improve their processes. 
• Farmers who want to connect with like-minded people and get inspired. 

Vague descriptions are a common mistake and they have a direct impact on your conversions. So, take some time to learn more about how to write an effective VOD description.

4. A Free Trial Sign Up Button

Having a free-trial sign-up on your homepage will entice your visitors to watch your content and get a taste of the good life. In fact, 52% of free-trial sign-ups convert into long-term paying customers.

Free-trial sign-ups are one of the most powerful marketing tools our Uscreen customers use, and it’s effective across a wide range of niches:

The best place to put your free trial sign-ups is towards the top of your page, around the end of your VOD description, like how The London Method does here:

Free trials help your visitor’s overcome their biggest objections like:

• Is this product worth it?
• Will I get value from this product?
• Is this product right for me?
• How is this different from similar products I’ve used?

Even better, a free trial sign-up button is just 1 way to get more leads and paying customers, you can check out how to leverage free content to get more leads below!

5. Highlights From Your Content Catalog

Your video website’s homepage should showcase the top content from your service. 

This is where you get to entice your potential customers with the great content you offer and show them what life as a paying subscriber will be like.

Take a look at how Button TV does this by inviting people to “browse programs”:

They’re showcasing just enough content to show what experiences await a subscriber on the other side.

You could also take a slightly different approach by showing content from all of your key categories like Magic Stream does here:

There is no right or wrong way to do this, you’ll just need to test and see what works for your audience. But you definitely need to include some portion of your content catalog on your homepage.

You can also supercharge your content catalog with this next must-have element…

6. Descriptive Thumbnails

Thumbnails are the entry point to all video content online. They can make-or-break whether someone watches your content or not.

This is as true for your video membership website homepage as it is for YouTube, or anywhere else you might share your videos. In fact, the right thumbnail can boost engagement up to 154%.

The thumbnails you share here should be…

• relevant
• eye-catching
• easy to read
• descriptive
• branded

…like these ones on Art For Kids Hub’s homepage:

The more enticing these thumbnails are, the better the chances that people will click through to watch trailers or sign up for your free trial.

Check out this guide from our YouTube channel to learn more about how to create epic looking thumbnails for your videos:

Click here to watch the video -> youtube.com/watch?v=VPUdSPmRttc

7. Customer Testimonials

When making a purchasing decision, your customers are often looking for what’s known as social proof. It’s a psychological principle where we either:

1. Copy the actions of other people like us.
2. Copy the actions of people we want to be like.

There are a number of reasons why we do this, but generally speaking, one of them is to reduce the feeling of risk. We want to know that other people have already done this and got results.

That’s why 90% of buyers read online reviews to decide whether they’ll purchase a product.

Which is why having customer testimonials can be a great way to put potential customers at ease, increase their trust in your brand, and convert more leads to customers. 

Take a look at this example from Lisset Perrier Artistry’s homepage, they have a carousel of reviews (that they added using Uscreen’s landing page builder):

If you were an on-the-fence potential customer, that might just be enough to get you to sign up for a free trial or join their service outright! 

You’ll need to look at the theme you’re using on your website to see if you can add testimonials to your homepage. If not, you can try a workaround, like adding screenshots from social media.

A great way to get testimonials is to incentivize your existing customers with coupons. Take a look at point 5 in our coupon marketing guide to find out more.

8. The Benefits Of Using Your Platform

Everyone who visits your video website is looking to answer one question:

What’s in it for me?

They want to know how they will benefit from using your video-on-demand platform. If you answer that question well enough, the chances they sign up will dramatically increase.

Many video business owners do this by listing the features of their website and video content. These are tangible things, like:

• “We offer OTT apps.”
• “Tune into weekly live streams.”
• “Download and watch videos offline.”

While they are definitely important to mention, you’ll still need to trigger the emotional voice in their head.

You can do this by highlighting how people will actually benefit from using your platform and engaging with your premium content.

Let me show you this by translating the features in the list above into benefits:

• “Access content on the device you choose, wherever you are!”
• “Get answers to your questions in weekly live-streamed Q&A sessions.”
• “Download videos to watch them offline, on your own time.”

Here’s a great short-and-sweet example of this from Birdietime:

You can do this yourself by listing your feature, and then writing out what it allows your customer to do directly afterwards. That’s the feature and benefit in one!

9. An Accurate Description Of Your OTT Apps

This is a big one…

Video websites often use an image on their homepage, like the one below, that shows their service being broadcast to multiple devices:

These images are great if you offer streaming through a branded OTT app; one that your customers can download to watch your content natively on a device.

If you do offer apps, you should definitely use this to showcase how your customers can access your content on their chosen device – and be sure to say which apps are available.

However…

Make sure to put OTT logos and images that relate to apps only if you offer OTT apps, this will avoid any confusion about your service.

10. Contact, T&C’s, And Privacy Policy Pages

Finally…

There are 3 pages that should be visible and accessible on your homepage. They are your:

1. Contact page.
2. Terms and conditions.
3. Privacy policy.

Having these pages can help build trust with your audience, and give anybody who wants to read the fine print the opportunity to do so.

Typically these pages are available through links in your footer, like what PSB+ does here:

Wrapping This Up…

Now you know the must-have elements to pimp out your video website’s home page.

To recap, you can create a video website homepage that stands out using these 10 elements:

1. Consistent branding.
2. An attractive hero image.
3. An effective VOD description.
4. A free trial sign-up button.
5. Highlights from your content catalog.
6. Descriptive video thumbnails.
7. Customer testimonials.
8. The benefits of using your platform.
9. An accurate description of your OTT apps.
10. Links to your contact, T&Cs, and privacy pages.

If you do these, you’ll have created a homepage that’s made to convert your visitors to paying subscribers.