Getting training right is only half the battle. Before employees even get to training, there’s a path they take. That’s why ensuring training is easy to access and fast is also essential. Part of that requires choosing the right video hosting platform for training videos.
Think about all the places videos are used in training. They’re embedded in eLearning courses, directly into a learning experience platform (LXP), linked inside emails, embedded on the company intranet, and more. They could be delivered in a myriad of different places, but none of those can (or should) natively support serving videos to employees.
Ensuring a seamless and stable platform across all places employees may watch a video is critical to successful training. Think briefly about the last time you watched a training video at work. Was it a seamless experience, or did you feel frustrated by slow loading times or a clunky interface?
A poor quality video hosting platform can harm how effective a training video is.
When employees are scattered across the globe, a quality video hosting platform is even more important. Choosing the right video hosting platform is key to delivering seamless workplace training videos.
But with many options available, how do you discern which one perfectly aligns with your corporate training needs?
This post will help you understand what to consider when choosing the best training video hosting platform for your needs. There is no single right answer, but zeroing in on the essential features can help you choose the best option.
Choosing the best option will elevate your corporate training programs and improve employee experience across all the places they may encounter training. We’ll look at the must-have functionalities that ensure smooth embedding into eLearning, intranets, applications, and more.
Whether it’s scalability, security, analytics, or user experience, this post aims to provide the information you need to ask the right questions and make an informed decision. Ultimately, you’ll ensure employees receive the best possible training experience.
Before we discuss the features you should consider for training video hosting, you must first understand your needs.
Understanding Your Corporate Training Needs
There’s no single perfect solution for hosting training videos. While YouTube may be sufficient for some, Vimeo or Wistia are good solutions for others (but by no means the only solutions). There is no one-size-fits-all solution for training videos.
Take the time to assess your goals, objectives, and the specifics of what you’re trying to accomplish with the video hosting platform. It’s also helpful to pinpoint the single most important features. Is it speed you’re looking for, a clean interface that can be customized, or perhaps you want to integrate videos into other platforms?
Consider the size of your organization and the number of employees who will be accessing the training videos. Are you a small startup with a handful of employees or a multinational corporation with thousands of staff members spread across different locations?
Understanding your needs is more important than understanding the tools features.
Understanding your scale will help you determine the scalability requirements for your video hosting platform.
Additionally, think about the nature of your training content. Will you be delivering general knowledge courses or specialized technical training? Do you need interactive features built into the video hosting platform?
Identifying these factors will help you narrow your options when evaluating video hosting platforms. Once you know exactly what you’re looking for, it’s time to explore the key features.
Key Features to Look for in a Video Hosting Platform
Now that you have a clear understanding of the needs for your corporate training videos let’s explore the key features to look for in a video hosting platform. Your most important factors will dictate how important each one of these is.
So, without further ado, let’s examine the key features you should consider and compare them to your training video needs.
Scalability: Ensuring Growth Alignment
A scalable video hosting platform is essential for organizations anticipating growth or having fluctuating training demands. As your workforce expands or changes, you need a platform that can accommodate increasing users without compromising performance.
It also may not be the size of your organization. What if you’re a SaaS company and a training video for your product goes viral? It would be horrible if that video failed to drive user skills and application usage.
A video hosting platform must keep up with employee needs.
Even for internal employees, video usage could fluctuate. While your employee numbers may stay relatively stable, when a new mandatory training video is released, the video hosting platform will see a huge influx of views.
Can the platform scale?
Look for platforms that offer flexible pricing models based on usage or user tiers. It may be important to look at the bandwidth allotment as that can directly affect your ability to scale.
Security: Safeguarding Your Corporate Content
If your training videos contain proprietary information that must be protected, YouTube is definitely not the video hosting platform for you. On the other hand, if you’re a SaaS company providing training to external users, it may be a great solution that also attracts new users.
Whatever your needs are, ensuring sensitive information remains confidential and protected from unauthorized access is essential. Look for platforms that offer robust security measures such as password protection, encryption, and secure streaming protocols.
You may also want to limit your videos to embedding on certain URLs or viewing them only from within your company firewall. These are all considerations when choosing a training video hosting platform.
Customization Options: Tailoring the User Experience
Company branding and a seamless experience for employees are essential. If you use a platform like YouTube, you have little to no control over how videos appear and how other videos are promoted.
Each platform offers different levels of customization and ensures videos follow brand guidelines. If customization of the video interface is important, look for video hosting platforms that allow you to customize the player interface and add your organization’s branding.
Analytics and Reporting: Tracking Employee Data
While tracking anything meaningful related to learning from a video hosting platform is nearly impossible, data is still important. You can gather data that shows how engaged or how many employees videos reached, though.
If this data is important, pay attention to the available data and analytics. Can you access how long employees watched a video, how many people watched it, how many repeat views, etc.?
Look for platforms that provide detailed analytics and reporting features that you need. If this data isn’t important or you won’t ever bother to look at it, these features shouldn’t be the focus of your choice.
Integration Capabilities: Seamless Embedding into Existing Systems
Part of technology’s power comes from integrating with other tools. This also applies to a training video hosting platform. It may be important that your video hosting platform integrates with your current technology.
These integrations could range from your learning management system (LMS) or even CRM. Then there are simple things like ensuring the video embeds effectively into the various places you need to embed it. Then, there are the controls on how it looks when embedded. Does it blend in, or does it look horrible with few controls?
If integrations aren’t important, great. But if they are, having a tool that can integrate allows for a unified user experience and simplifies how training videos are presented and accessed. It could be important to look for platforms that offer robust APIs or pre-built integrations with popular technologies.
User Experience: Creating an Engaging Learning Environment
Just like you want a seamless experience accessing a training video, you also want a great experience while watching it. That means the interface is easy to use and has all the features employees commonly use.
Basic video hosting platforms don’t offer all the features we’re accustomed to today. These could include skipping ahead 10 or 30 seconds, adjusting the playback speed, or chapters. If these features aren’t essential, fine, but know what features your employees deem important.
Look for platforms that offer intuitive navigation, responsive design for mobile devices, and interactive features such as chapter markers or searchable transcripts. A seamless user experience will ensure the interface gets out of the way and lets employees learn what they need.
Interactivity: More Than Just Watching
Training video platforms are becoming more complex every day. Employees can do more than watch a video; they can be interactive and even provide branching to let viewers skip around to different sections.
If you plan to incorporate interactive elements into your training videos, ensure the hosting platform supports these features. Look for platforms that offer interactive video capabilities such as branching scenarios, clickable hotspots, or in-video quizzes.
While these may not be important to you now, they could be in the future, so it’s nice to foresee that. These interactive elements can open the creative floodgates on what can be done with videos to provide employees with a better learning experience.
Budget Considerations and Pricing Models
Finding a video hosting platform that meets all your requirements and budget considerations is crucial. No matter how wonderful a platform is, if it’s too pricey, then all the features are just a tease.
Evaluate different pricing models offered by various platforms, such as by the amount of storage you use, the number of videos, and the bandwidth used. There are as many subscription models as video hosting platforms. It’s all about balancing the price with the features you need.
Wrap Up
Choosing the perfect video hosting platform for your corporate training needs is a critical decision to make or break the effectiveness of employee or user training. Understanding your organization’s requirements and evaluating key features is an essential step you can’t skip.
Once you know your requirements, it’s important to assess key features and functionality, such as scalability, security, customization options, analytics, integration capabilities, user experience, and interactivity.
While all the features you need are important, if a tool isn’t within your price range, it’s as good as dead. So, budget considerations will ultimately decide if a tool is right.
Remember that no single platform will be a perfect fit for every organization. Consider your unique needs and prioritize the features that align with your training objectives. You can deliver a seamless video experience to employees with the right video hosting platform.
No matter how good a training video hosting platform is, it won’t improve ineffective training videos. We specialize in creating high-quality technical training videos and would love to create some for you. Schedule a free consultation to discuss how we can help take your technical training videos to the next level.