If you were to ask the experts whether or not your business website should have lots of videos and other media on it, they would all probably agree on one answer: “No!”

But, as far as conventional wisdom goes, there are times when reality necessitates that we go against the norm. In this case, it could be that you need to have demonstration videos that teach or inform your visitors about your products or services, for example – you just need those videos up and running.

Try as you may, the number of multimedia files will eventually make your website run increasingly slower. This is a bad thing: it is bad for your page load times and it is bad for your SEO rankings.

So, what can you do about it?

Well, below are 5 tips on how to handle the multimedia files on your website:

1. Use Compact Versions

Technology always provides us with options. You should be smart enough to realize which ones it is that you want to take advantage of. For example, various multimedia formats have just as many sizes for the same video and if you have one format that is too big, you can almost always convert it into another one that is much smaller.

Now, when people hear about having to convert their media flies, the first concern that comes to mind is whether they will need to make that conversion at the cost of quality. Well, if you use the right tools, you do not need to compromise on quality.

For video files you can search for, and download, conversion and compression tools that will squeeze the sizes down for you.

In case of images you can, for example, choose to use only PNG rather than BMP files – they are always smaller.

2. Don’t Host Them Yourself

If yours is the kind of business that has in-house servers and you maintain all your sites and data on your own premises, you will be tempted to also host your videos and images.

Don’t do it.

Having to host your own media files will have a huge impact on your resources: you will need extra disk space, you will need extra bandwidth, people will need to be assigned the task of handling and caring for the files – all of which will eventually cost you more and more as each day passes.

The saner option will be to have the files hosted on a provider’s servers and linking back to them. Alternatively, you can have them embedded on your website for an aesthetically pleasing presentation.

This way, you can make sure you don’t bear the brunt of the media files’ costs and your website will perform much better.

If you really want to cut costs, you can have the files loaded on free servers – the only thing they will ask of you is that they be allowed to advertize on your videos. That is a fair price to pay, if you think about it.

3. Don’t Reinvent The Wheel

Although you might think that you may have come up with an innovative idea, you can rest assured that there is someone, somewhere out there, that has already done it. So, instead of simply going ahead and creating new videos, why don’t you look for those that have already been created by other people and use or reference them?

A good place to start is, of course, on YouTube. If you can find a video that closely explains what you are trying to do or tell your clients, write an article on the subject and let them know that there is a YouTube video that can demonstrate the point further.

Then simply link to, or embed, it.

4. Remove The Sound

If you really want to cut down on a video’s size cut out the audio. If you think the video can pass the message along without the sound, get rid of it. This is especially true if the audio has nothing to do with the video: things like background noises, motor vehicles passing by, people talking over the main subject, wind, etc. – they will detract from your video’s quality.

By getting rid of the sounds, you could actually be improving your video.

5. Split Them

Ok, so you have compressed them, moved them to a different server and even tried linking to third-party videos… but you’ve still got a slow-loading site. What’s next?

Well, the only thing left is to split your videos into 2 or more parts. Typically, people only have patience for a few-minutes’ worth of watching videos anyway. If you visit various websites (especially those that belong to the leaders in industry) you will see that they seldom have videos that run longer than 15 to 20 minutes.

If they think that a longer video is required, they break it into parts with each one ending with something like,”…To learn more about ____ please watch the next video…” This strategy serves two purposes: the viewers won’t be bored with extra long narratives and they know that the next video will be covering something specific and not meander all over everything.