How to Enable Autoplay for Your Embedded YouTube Videos

Nowadays YouTube is a popular term among Internet users as they speak of online video sharing. Everyone use Internet knows what is YouTube due to its popularity as a video sharing website. If you are seeking for online videos, YouTube is the first brand name comes in to your mind. Isn't it? Videos uploaded on YouTube are easy to share among users and the best use for bloggers and webmasters is that YouTube videos can be easily embedded on their pages. However as we embed a video on a page, we expect visitors to click on the play control to start watching. But there can be some occasions where we need videos to be auto-play without any user response as they land on our pages. Don't we?

Autoplay - A Useful Feature?

If you are trying to promote products or services with introductory or promotional videos, you might be looking for a way to autoplay videos as and when visitors land on your pages instead of asking them to click and start the video. It's a simple example where you will need autoplay feature on videos. Generally, you should aware of the user experience as you deal with autoplay feature on videos. It's not like showing off an image. Videos can be very distracting if it's not a part of the reason your visitors land on your post or page.

If you believe the video you have on the page is the primary resource that visitors land on your page should look into, then autoplay would be the right choice for you in that scenario unless your page take long time to load. If you think of using autoplay on videos, below factors may help you to go for a better decision..

● If the video is just the addition to your primary content, you should not interrupt users by auto-playing the video, and let them have the choice to watch or ignore it when they come across your video.

● Don't apply autoplay on multiple videos on same page. That will definitely keep users away from your pages.

● Eventhough auto-playing is the best option for you, every visitor may not happy with it. So, make sure the video has player controls where they can stop the video and explore other content on the page.

Please Turn Autoplay ON

If you think it's the best option for you to promote or increase marketing effectiveness, or the primary resource that visitors should look into, then autoplay feature is for you. I couldn't reveal you that YouTube supports autoplay feature on their videos. In addition, it shows user controls when playing videos too. So users can stop the video if they don't need to look into that video. We have already learnt how to embed YouTube videos on a blog or website. Lately a visitor of my blog, Jonny Jonn, asked me a question on enabling autoplay for YouTube videos. As that question pops up, I thought of converting the answer into a blog post where majority of users can make use of it if they wanna autoplay their embedded YouTube videos too. Let's have a look and learn how to enable autoplay for the YouTube videos.

Steps:

1. First off, grab the embed code for your preferred YouTube video.

2. Now you just need to append autoplay parameter to the source video URL.

For example, assume the embed code for your preferred YouTube video is the one displayed below.

Did you notice the highlighted part in that code snippet? It's the YouTube source video URL. Now let's append the autoplay parameter to video URL.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ScNNfyq3d_w?autoplay=1

Did you get it? I'm sure you have clearly identified what happened over there. Take the video URL with appended autoplay parameter and replace original video source URL in the code snippet. Once it's replaced, the code snippet will reflect as below.

Now we have appended autoplay parameter and the YouTube video will start to autoplay without waiting for user response. I mean, user doesn't need to click play icon on the player to start playing video.

Enjoy :-)

Harleena Singh said...: That sounds simple Mayura!

Though I've never used the feature of autoplay because the videos I have on my blog are mainly there for people to click to ply - if they wish to see it. But you are right - this feature works best for those who have some products or things to sell and I've often visited sites where the video starts playing on it's own, without us having to play it on.

And I never thought that all you needed was to add one word to the code, which I could never have guessed otherwise!

I need to bookmark this page and keep it all filed under 'YouTube" series that I can get back to whenever I do start off with it too :)

Thanks for sharing. :); October 14, 2012 at 5:48 PM
Mayura De Silva said...: Hi Harleena,

I know dear :) I'm discouraging people to use it on blogs, else it would be really distracting unless they have an acceptable reason. I have seen autoplay videos on some sales pages too. It draws attention of users for their products and services :)

Ohw... It's really simple. Isn't it Harleena? :) Just one parameter to append to the usual embedding code.

Ha ha ;) Keep things organized dear? Cool... I hope you would love to use this feature if you need to or you can share with someone who needs it. May be, a client :)

Thanks for coming over and leaving your thoughtful comment dear :)

Cheers...; October 14, 2012 at 6:19 PM
Brenda Lee said...: Great tips Mayura. As you know, I like Youtube for showing some of Titan's silly moments. This is very useful!; October 14, 2012 at 7:00 PM
Jan Bierens said...: Google and thus YouTube rule. ;) There's plenty options to play with in the iframe department... ;); October 14, 2012 at 11:20 PM
Mayura De Silva said...: Hi Brenda,

Yes, You can play with autoplay feature on your boy's YouTube videos ;) I think you can create a diary for him with his videos and pics too. Make sure user experience is preserved dear ;)

Thanks for coming over and sharing your idea here with the comment dear :)

Cheers...; October 15, 2012 at 5:04 AM
Mayura De Silva said...: Hi Jan,

Absolutely. You know what can be done with iFrame and HTML5 players, right? ;) HTML5 will overtake 'em from 2014. Anyway I hope this will helpful for ones who seek Jan.

Thanks for stopping by to share your ideas mate ;)

Cheers...; October 15, 2012 at 5:12 AM
Adrienne said...: I appreciate you sharing this with us Mayura because I'm sure there are some people who don't quite get this or know how to turn on the auto play. I think it depends on where you're going to place the video as to whether or not you want that turned on.

You did a great job of explaining this as always. What a great teacher you have become Mayura.

~Adrienne; October 15, 2012 at 10:24 PM
Mayura De Silva said...: Hi Adrienne,

"I think it depends on where you're going to place the video as to whether or not you want that turned on" ~ It's very true dear :)

Some jus' try to turn autoplay on for videos on their blog posts after they seen it on sales pages or somewhere promote products, without understanding that it would be very distracting for readers. So I just wanted to impose the factor that autoplay feature should be used with care.

Thanks for coming over and sharing your comment dear :) Ah... Thanks for your compliments too Adrienne, they always encourage me :)

Cheers...; October 17, 2012 at 5:25 AM
Donna Merrill said...: Thanks Mayura for this tip! I usually get annoyed with auto play on a video. I like my readers to choose if they want to watch a video or not.
I know it is done on sales pages sometimes and it does work well. I think it is a good idea for that.
But when it comes to a blog, if I get an auto play and can't stop it....I have to turn down the sound and it gets annoying.
But that is just me and how I feel. Otherwise, this is a great explanation of how to use it especially on a sales page.

Donna; October 19, 2012 at 1:03 AM
Mayura De Silva said...: Hi Donna,

Absolutely dear :) That's one thing I needed to convey for bloggers and content generators on using videos with autoplay ON. They jus' use it and don't think how it could be distracting. I've been annoyed by such videos, but sometimes perfect fit for sales pages though.

Nope... Nope... It's not just you :) Unless it's only the video for page, that could be really annoying and stats proved that people doesn't visit that site thereafter. I hope whomever wanna enable autoplay will read this post and understand when to use it.

Thanks for coming over and sharing your wonderful comment on this one dear :)

Cheers...; October 19, 2012 at 10:19 AM

Mayura4Ever

October 14, 2012