YouTube Video For Shopify

[Irena]

Hello,

Do I still need to compress the video if I upload it to YouTube to use on Shopify? Will it have impact on site's speed? Sorry, if my question is stupid.

Thanks!

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

Youtube videos are already compressed on their platform, but videos are large files so they do affect site speed.

There are a couple ways you can minimize the impact:

1) Lazy load the video so that it does load until the user scrolls into view. This will save some resources (for the video), but will still have the embedded youtube scripts loading on the page. To lazy load the video, you do this the same as with lazy loading images. This guide will help: https://speedboostr.com/shopify-lazy-loading/

2) You can prevent all the resources from the video loading by using a tactic we call Deferred Video Loading. This prevents the video and the related youtube resources from loading at all during page load, by replacing the embedded youtube video with a static image. Then when the user clicks on the image, it then pulls in the embedded youtube and allows them to play it. This guide will help you achieve that: https://speedboostr.com/deferred-video-loading/

[Nick · Accepted solution]

Hi @Irena,

That's a great question to be honest, not a stupid question at all! 

@JoesIdeas has giving you some great information there. Shopify also has a help guide for adding different media types such as videos which you also might find valuable or useful.

You can read the full guide here. 

[Irena]

Thank you, @JoesIdeas and @Nick for your replies! It's very useful. @JoesIdeas, I think videos on new Dawn theme work the way you mentioned in point 2), since when I upload videos there I also can add the cover images (static images).