Listing of all videos in one category on a VideoOnDemand service

Question

What is the best way to list all videos in one category?

• thumbnails grid with minimal info (fex. Name and duration)
• list with thumbnails and more info or
• something completely different?

Answer 1

I really enjoy when the site display a few frames when hovering over the video in listing page.

Answer 2

Personally, I would continue with what is proven to be successful, and don't reinvent warm water. Have a look at Youtube, Google video, ...

Most important, is K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple and Stupid. Video on demand should be straightforward. Less text, more video. A listing should give the user certain information that is useful, but in the most minimalistic manner as possible.

Things i can think of at the moment are:

• Rating: Is this video helpful to other people or not
• Matching my needs: Try to do a little more effort for your visitors: show them the videos that might be interesting for them You can do this by storing the video's they already watched, and based on those, create a profile of what might interest them more.
• "These videos might be interesting for you": This will ensure you that your visitors will stay longer on your website, and are more likely to return.

As I said before, these are all methods that have been tested before, and are proven to work.

Answer 3

The way I see it:

Your job is to let the user find what they're looking for, as quickly as possible. They may be searching for something visual in the video or for specific data in the info. So we need to show them both a thumbnail of reasonable size and some info - not just name and duration - probably the rating/number of views and the description, maybe the name of the publisher and the date, maybe keywords/tags, if it's not the same as category.

As has been mentioned above, providing a brief preview of the video is a great practice, and youtube, google video and vimeo are doing a great job (note how vimeo lets you choose the format you prefer). Also, and I hope it's ok to bring this up here, but, ahem, adult entertainment websites take this issue extremely seriously and invest heavily in usability testing. With the kind of money at stake in their business, they're often one step ahead of the rest of the industry.

Answer 4

This is really going to depend on the type of videos you have.

• If your videos are all very similar in nature (like a list of training videos), things like thumbnails, comments, length, and views might be less important than the video title, description, and tags.
• If your videos are dissimilar or have to do with entertainment, things like larger thumbnails, video length, ratings, and total views might be more helpful.

As with most UX decisions, think about your content and what would be most important to your audience.

Answer 5

Giving instant visual feedback about the video content like solomongaby said can be seen on Dailymotion.

List or grid will work both. I would put a lot of thought into related videos, though. A list view require somebody to know what he's interested in. But if an entry point is viewing the video (via search or share) similar videos might catch the users interest. Factors could be tags, other user's interests, your interests, popularity, date or publisher. And a semantic analysis of imagery and sound if you have next gen ressources.

For further research this overview for video sites might help.