How to Use Clickable Images on Your Videos

The unspoken currency of video is viewer attention. Your goal, whether you’re using video for marketing, sales, training, or education, should be to capture and keep your viewers attention long enough to convey your message effectively. Mindstamp makes it easier than ever to maximize every second of screentime by breaking the “one size fits all” barrier of traditional video. By adding interactivity and personalization to your existing content, viewers become engaged and connected - instead of watching and forgetting. 

As a Mindstamp subscriber, you’ll have access to a powerful toolkit consisting of 8 primary interactions built with attention retention in mind. These include the Question, Button, Hotspot, Interactive Images, Navigation & Branching, Drawings, Multimedia, and Interactive Text. Best of all? It doesn’t take an expert to use them. Continue reading to see how one interaction in particular, the Interactive Image, can bring your videos to life. 

Learn More:

  1. Image tutorial
  2. Understanding your image settings
  3. How to use images in your videos
  4. Image use-cases
  5. How to add images

You can also watch a video tutorial:

What are Interactive Images? 

So, what makes Mindstamp different from the countless available programs that allow you to overlay images onto video? The key difference here is that Mindstamp allows you to turn your existing images into interactive images. That means that you can set an “action” to take place when your viewer clicks on an image. These actions include: 

  • Opening a link to instantly send your viewers to an external site of your choice. Shoppable video, anyone?
  • Starting an email to a predetermined address. Connecting with your audience has never been easier.
  • Placing a call when your viewer clicks an image on mobile. When’s the last time you saw that in a traditional video?
  • Change time in the video to direct viewer traffic. Let viewers click on what interests them, and take them to those points in the video. 
  • Switch to another video to create branching experiences and easily direct viewer traffic. 
  • Expand an image. Make the most out of the space you have in-video by allowing viewers to expand content when necessary.
  • Show a message as soon as your viewer clicks an image. This could be venue information, recipe ingredients, product specs, etc.
  • Play a video clip to provide more information about your on-screen product. Or, create interactive learning experiences by teaching students about items they click on.
  • Play an audio clip to immerse your viewer in the video. An automotive ad is one thing - but an automotive ad that has a speaker you can click on to hear the engine roar? Welcome to the future of video. 
  • Track and continue the content. This means your viewer's experience isn’t changed when they click an image, but you’ll be able to see their interaction in the Data & Analytics. 
  • Collect a free-response in-video. Get real feedback when it matters most. Change your “what did you think of…” to “what do you think of…” 

In summary, Interactive images are not only more effective pieces of content, as they enable your viewer to perform helpful tasks in-video, but they also promote audience engagement. This sort of “form meets function” solution allows you to visually enhance your content while simultaneously accomplishing the goal of keeping viewer attention. Now that you know what we’re working with, let’s see how interactive images are being used around the world. 

How can you use Interactive Images?

Send your viewers on an interactive adventure

Promote your product in-video

Seamlessly connect with your audience 

Allow students to quickly download certificates

Enhance your cooking tutorial with interactivity!

As you can see, there’s no shortage of powerful ways to use interactive images. Now that you know how to use them, it’s time to put one into action!

Who uses Interactive Images? 

Truth be told, you’d have a hard time finding an organization that couldn’t benefit from interactive images. See for yourself: 

  • Marketing Agencies use interactive images to create shareable, immersive content that generates more valuable impressions
  • Sales teams use interactive images to promote their products in-video, when viewer interest is highest
  • Advertising agencies bring traffic to their partners by using interactive images to increase click-through rates
  • Corporate Training managers use interactive images to boost in-class engagement and put an end to “sit back and watch” onboarding
  • Tradeshow displays with preloaded interactive images automate the guest experience at events
  • K-12 uses interactive images to keep young learners interested and excited 
  • Universities use interactive images to prevent e-learning from becoming mundane 
  • E-Commerce specialists use interactive images to create shoppable videos that connect person to product like never before
  • Museums use interactive images to let visitors create their own adventure and learn about what interests them the most 
  • Event Coordinators use interactive images to see what guests are most interested in based on what they click on (Reporting & Analytics) 
  • Professionals have an edge over the competition with interactive images that initiate contact (Send an email, Start a call) 
  • Tech companies use interactive images to make in-depth specs available to those who are interested, without taking up too much space on-screen 
  • Real Estate agents use interactive images to create unforgettable digital house tours

And that’s only scratching the surface. The real magic of interactivity happens when you’re in the driver's seat. Lets see what happens when you add your first interactive image to your video. 

Interactive Image Configuration

Adding an image to Mindstamp is easy. You can choose to search your phone or computer for a file to upload, drop an image URL, or select a previously used image from your image library. 

The sky's the limit: take your viewers on an in-video adventure with interactive images

Once you add an interactive image to your video, you’ll be prompted with a number of helpful configuration options. First, you’ll be able to choose the placement and size of your image. You can even check the “Use Snapping” or “Show Grid” options to help with symmetry and evenness. To make sure your image is exactly where you want it, adjust the rotation angle for that perfect fit. 

You’ll also have the ability to label the image. You can choose to show or hide a given label, but we always recommend adding one, as it helps maintain accuracy in the Reporting and Analytics (ie - user clicked “Airplane” instead of user clicked “image”). 

Now that you’ve decided on a label, you can figure out whether or not you want to pause the experience as soon as the image shows up. You can pause the video for a preset 5, 10, 30, or 60 seconds, or even require the viewer to click on the image before the experience continues. Pausing the video for an image is a great way to both draw attention towards the content, and direct viewers to get involved with the video. With the bulk of the configurations done at this point, you can move on to choose exactly how long the interactive image stays on screen.

Finally, the click action! This is the heart of interactivity. Whatever you choose to happen here will take effect as soon as your viewer clicks or taps on the image you selected. Happy innovating!

-  The Mindstamp Team

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