When it comes to creating videos, you can’t neglect design. In a noisy landscape of brands competing for their audiences’ attention, you simply can’t afford to put less than stellar content out into the world–and that includes the design aesthetic of your videos. 

A well-designed video attracts new viewers, keeps existing viewers coming back, and delivers a consistent, branded experience to your audience, every time. But, a poorly-designed video can absolutely derail your video marketing efforts. 

Your video marketing design should be included in your overall video branding. Design elements are part of your visual branding–they help your audience instantly recognize your videos as part of your brand and add brand authority to each video. 

Potential viewers will gravitate toward videos that check off all the boxes: high quality, engaging content, strong visual branding, and great design. 

Watch out for these five common video marketing design mistakes when creating videos for your audience.

1. You’re Not Choosing the Right Tools 

Choosing the wrong design tools can mean the difference between a well-designed video and a poorly-designed one. This is the difference between a campaign that succeeds and one that flops.  

Your tool of choice should be scalable so you can easily create marketing videos at scale. That means your tool automatically generates videos that are size-optimized for different social media platforms, saving you valuable editing time.

Designing videos that scale to each of your social media platforms gives you the power to create large numbers of videos quickly, allowing you to keep up with the 24-hour social media cycle. 

The tools you choose should also take some of the design aspects out of your hands so you’re not doubting every design decision you make.

2. Your Videos Are Too Long 

Viewers consume brands’ information in bite-size chunks, and videos are no exception. Your video content should be short, sweet, and to-the-point. And, the length of your video is integral to its design. 

To maximize your views and keep your audience engaged, keep your videos under 30 seconds in most cases. Storytelling videos that add depth to your brand can be a bit lengthier–up to one minute. 

3. You’re Forgetting Contrasting Colors 

To help your videos stand out, use contrasting colors. Contrasting colors are eye-catching, attention-grabbing features in the most successful online video designs. 

Use contrasting colors in your video design elements to add striking pops of color. A colorful, well-thought-out design works wonders for your video’s intro and outro. Additionally, utilize them in the video production itself. 

Outside of graphic design elements for your video, think about how contrasting colors may be used by your on-camera subjects. For example, when you’re creating a product video, do so with colors in mind. Have the product contrast with the background–you want that color to really pop, even if it’s the bright red shoe on a model’s foot against a white background.

Adobe Color is an easy, free digital color wheel that can help you choose the perfect color palette for your design. You can choose from a variety of combination styles, like complementary, monochrome, compound colors, and more. It’s a great way to get fresh ideas for your color palette–or select a new one if you’re planning to rebrand. 

4. Your Text is Too Hard to Read 

Almost all your videos will need at least some text to add context to the video and to your brand. The text needs to be big enough and clean enough to read easily, even in the middle of a idle scroll-through. If the message grabs your viewer’s attention easily, they’ll be much more likely to stop and watch. 

Viewers who scroll by and pause to watch your videos on silent will also benefit from well-designed text. But if your font is hard to read, you can bet they’ll scroll on past. 

Choose a font that’s easy to read–nothing fancy required. Basic sans serif fonts like Arial and Lato and serif fonts like Times New Roman and Georgia are all great, industry-standard choices. They’ll look and feel familiar to your audience, and they won’t require much extra processing to read.

Opt-out of cursive fonts or any overly-complicated choices. You don’t want your viewers to leave your video because they had to think too hard about what was going on with your font.

Make sure your font is large enough, and the text contrasts with your background enough to stand out. A solid, easy-to-read font choice won’t matter if your background swallows it.

5. You’re Only Focusing on Desktop Views 

If you’re only focusing on desktop views in your video design, you’re missing out on more than half of your potential traffic. That’s because mobile traffic accounts for 53% of all internet traffic. 

Even if you’re editing on a larger screen, you’ll need your video to be mobile-friendly, too. You’ll want the ability to reach potential views who are scrolling through their phones–not just clicking a mouse at their desktop. (A tool that designs to scale can help you out with that, too.) 

You should absolutely be using a high quantity of vertical video that’s mobile-friendly, especially on platforms like Instagram Stories, Stories Ads, IGTV, and Snapchat. You’ll need a lot of video for Instagram Stories–remember, these videos only last 24 hours! 

Using a balanced mix of both horizontal and vertical video will help your videos reach both desktop and mobile viewers. 

Conclusion 

Great video design is critically important to the success of your video marketing because it attracts potential viewers and keeps your audience coming back for more. Viewers will recognize your videos’ branded design at a glance, and your video aesthetic will have a consistent and professional look and feel. 

If you need to save time on your video design, use a template to speed up and streamline your video creation process. Saving time on the front end means you’ll be able to turn out more high-quality, well-designed content, keep your audience engaged with your brand, and improve your results.

Looking for custom video templates to help you scale your video marketing at lightning speed? Find out more about Shakr today.