Do you use online video as part of your marketing campaigns? Do you know how effective your Web videos are? Do you know where your viewers are coming from? Sure, you can find out how many YouTube viewers are tuning in and you may have set up some analytical features on your Web site, but is that enough? Wistia Video Heatmaps is an interesting product that allows you to view real time statistics about your embedded Internet videos including how your viewers are viewing your videos. For example, a color-coded bar serves as a visual representation of your video’s timeline. The bar shows you whether or not the viewer watched the entire video, where the viewer stopped, and which sections of the video were watched multiple times.

The video heatmaps are part of a larger Wistia application that provides public and private online video sharing, real-time tracking, and file sharing. You can even set up alerts and RSS feeds to stay on top of the latest activity.

The heatmap portion of the application is particularly compelling as you can view a real-time “visitor stream” showing the latest activity for a particular video. Not only can you see how well your video is connecting with viewers, you can see the general geographic location, based on IP address, of your viewers. If you embedded a business video and your target market is Dallas, Texas, you can see if viewers in the area are tuning in. If you see that your business video is not connecting with viewers in Dallas and appears to be popular in Michigan, then you know that you need to tweak your online marketing video campaign to attract local viewers.

Using Wistia and viewing heatmaps for your online videos is quite easy. Start by signing up for a free 15-day trial. All you need is an email address, user name, and password. Once signed in, upload a video, grab the embed code, and embed the video in your Web site, blog, or ezine. Whenever anyone views the embedded online video, the view is tracked and recorded. From your Wistia dashboard, you can then view a real-time display of your Web video’s performance. A summary view shows you overall stats including:

• Page loads
• Number of visitors
• Percentage of visitors that clicked “play”
• Number of video plays
• Percentage of video watched on average

Below the summary is the real-time visitor stream where you’ll see the color-coded heatmaps. You can view all activity, only video plays, or only when the visitor doesn’t play the video.

The interface is simple to navigate with three primary areas: Projects, Stats, and Account.
Depending on your preferences, you can set up your Wistia account to alert you whenever comments are made on your video, when a contact invites someone else to view your project, or when someone downloads your content.

This Web-based product is available through a monthly subscription with three plans available: Basic ($79 per month), Enhanced ($179 per month), and Premium ($379 per month). Each of the plans has different storage, contact, and manager limits. In addition, optional numbers of “embedded plays” can be purchased.

While you may be able to see how many people are landing on your Web pages that contain an online video using traditional Web analytics, if you want to measure the effectiveness of your Web videos, a tool such as Wistia’s video heatmap tool shows you whether or not your visitors are pressing the play button, and if so, what parts of the videos are engaging them or causing them to stop watching.

Have you tried an online video tracking tool? We want to know! Share your thoughts and experiences with us.