Video sharing websites enjoy a tremendous amount of traffic due to their entertainment and engagement value.

But before you decide to setup your own video sharing website, do you know what your intended viewers want?

At the moment, YouTube is the largest video sharing website in the world with over 1.5billion logged in users every month as of 2017. The website is a global phenomenon with visitors from over 90 countries and an average of 1 billion hours of video being watched on the platform per day.

These statistics are enough to make anyone want to start their own video sharing website and people have attempted. Examples of other video sharing websites that are doing quite well are Vimeo, Flickr, Veoh, Yfrog, and so on. But even with their recorded successes, these companies don’t come anywhere close to what YouTube has achieved.

But this doesn’t mean you should give up on your dream of owning your own successful video sharing website. I’ll share with you some of the most important things you need to know when trying to build a successful video-sharing site.

First, why do people stream games and videos?

Some people (especially non-streaming video enthusiasts and non-gamers) think online videos and games are time wasters and so they’ll often try to whip together a thousand and one reason why it’s bad for anyone.

But besides its entertainment values, online videos and games can be a great way to relate with the world. People love to watch videos or stream video games for a variety of reasons, including for amusement and fun, to practice or learn some new skills and information, to kill boredom, for emotional satisfaction and as an alternative to negative behaviors.

For others, it’s just the right pastime to bond with their significant others and enjoy a good relaxation at home. And some core gamers and video enthusiasts would tell you that if you’re streaming videos or engrossed in your pc game alone, nothing beats an induction vaporizer as the perfect companion for healthy pleasure and escapism.

However, if your video sharing website does not have some very helpful and up-to-date features, people will struggle to enjoy using your platform, and will likely just head back to a rival site or ultimately, YouTube.

What features do people want?

Naturally, people want video sharing websites to have interesting videos. But having interesting content isn’t enough as you need to add essential features that’ll make it easy and convenient for your visitors to access the videos of their choice as soon as they want it.

The main features people want on video sharing websites so they can enjoy the experience include;

Speed

This feature is listed first because it is arguably the most essential. On the average, more than four seconds for a regular website page to load.

While videos do take longer than text pages to load due to the size of the content, make sure your site can deliver content as fast as possible, so you don’t lose user engagement.

A slow website is a big turn off, and since you already have contending video sharing websites out there, you can’t afford to give your potential visitors even the slightest reason to go to another platform.

You can try speeding up your loading time by making sure to host on a reliable hosting provider that can guarantee it. Another way to improve speed is to control the sizes of uploaded videos. The weightier a video is, the longer it’ll likely take to load.

Security

After speed comes security because cyber security is a big issue no one is willing to take for granted. Even the slightest whiff that your site might contain malicious content and you can expect that whatever few visitors you’ve been able to rack up may never return.

Some of the red flags that can lead visitors to think your site contains malicious properties are incessant pop ups and request for certain sensitive data. So, keep your video sharing website as transparent as possible to keep your visitors at ease. Also, make sure to keep your security features updated as necessary and to secure your website at all points of vulnerability.

Ease of uploading

The fastest way to get your video sharing site loaded with videos and so increase its entertainment value is to make it easy for your users to upload videos. Asides from facilitating the population of your site with content, it’ll also make your visitors happy and motivate them to put up more content. But while making it easy to upload videos is important, make sure security and content control is not compromised.

If you are uninterested in limiting the type of video content that can be uploaded on your website, no problem, but you the videos still need to be safe and not contain any malware or other virus that might damage your site or attack your visitors. Simply put, be sure not to compromise on security.

Option of live streaming

It won’t be fair to your users not to add the option of live streaming to your platform. Besides, almost every other video sharing platform already has this feature, so not having this feature could mean setting up your platform to lag behind the competition.

Option of video formats

So your visitors can access their favourite content, you need to provide video format options to assist every user get videos in a format that best suits them. Also, since certain formats reduce a video’s size, people with slower internet connection can select such video formats so it can load faster.

Social element

The comment section is where all the action is. If you want to make your video sharing website more popular, give your visitors the power to have conversations right there on your platform as well as share your video links directly to their social media pages.

Search

As earlier stated, your website needs to be super easy to use – zero hassles. One way to guarantee this is to make the site super user friendly across all devices (computers and smart devices). Searching for videos should be a breeze and you can heighten user experience through personalisation, so users can get video suggestions that are in line with their typical search preferences.

Option to download

There’s no reason why people shouldn’t be able to love using your platform even when they’re offline. So, give your users the option to download videos so they can enjoy it everywhere they go, regardless if they have an internet connection.

With all of these excellent features, you are in a better position to compete against all the video sharing websites that already exist and can even carve a niche for yourself.