I swapped my blog's main image for a short video and saw a 40% jump in time on page

I run a small tech blog and always used a big picture at the top of each post. Last month, I replaced that picture with a 15-second looping video clip showing the project in action. I figured it might look cool, but I didn't expect the analytics. Over the next 30 posts, the average time people spent on those pages went up by 40% compared to my older posts. I think the moving image just grabs attention better and makes people want to stick around. Has anyone else tested video headers against static images and seen different results?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_james1mo ago

Forty percent is a huge jump, are you sure your tracking is set up right? Could it just be the video buffering time getting counted as page time? Seems like a lot of change for just swapping a picture.

grace_white1mo ago

What if the new picture is above the fold and the old one was way down the page? That would make a huge difference in how long people stick around. I've seen that happen before where a big image loads first and keeps people from bouncing right away.

rose_cooper1mo ago

Yeah the_james has a point, that number seems off.