RunCabin Blog · Getting chosen

Should I put a video on my website?

October 30, 2026 · 8 min read

Short answer: you don't need one, but one short, real video of you and your work is worth more than almost anything else you could add to the page - as long as it's shot on your phone, not produced like an ad, and set up so it doesn't slow the site down. A homeowner deciding whether to let a stranger into their house wants to know who is going to knock on the door. Photos tell them what you've done. Thirty seconds of you talking tells them who you are.

What a video does that photos and words can't

Every contractor website says the same things. Licensed and insured. Quality work. Free estimates. Family owned. Customers have read those lines so many times they slide right past them. They are not lies, they just carry no weight anymore, because anybody can type them.

A video is hard to fake in the way that matters. When a homeowner hits play and sees you standing next to your truck, in the clothes you actually work in, telling them in your own voice that you've been painting houses in their county for nine years and you answer your own phone, they get the thing they were actually looking for: a sense of the person. Do you seem straight with people? Do you seem like someone who will show up on Tuesday when you said Tuesday? Words on a page can't answer that. Your face and voice answer it in seconds.

An owner on an HVAC trade forum put the problem plainly when someone else said a business that isn't online doesn't exist: "a website alone isn't enough - Why would I choose you to work on my unit?" That is the question a video is good at. It doesn't replace your reviews or your photos. It sits next to them and puts a real person behind them.

The videos that actually work for a local service business

Forget the idea that a website video means a brand film with drone shots and swelling music. For a one-truck or five-truck business, the plain stuff wins. In rough order of how useful they are:

• You, introducing yourself. Thirty to ninety seconds. Your name, what you do, which towns you cover, how long you've been at it, one thing you do that a lot of people in your trade don't (you lay drop cloths everywhere, you send a photo when the job's done, you pick up the phone yourself), and how to reach you. That's it. If you only ever make one video, make this one.
• A walkthrough of a finished job. Walk the room or the yard slowly and talk about what you did and why. "We replaced the rotted sill here, primed both sides before it went in so it doesn't happen again." This shows your work and how you think about it at the same time.
• A short before-and-after. Start on the before, cut to the after, same angle. Ten seconds is plenty. Time-lapses of a fence going up or a room getting painted do the same job.
• An answer to the question everybody asks. "How long does a deck stain last?" "Why does my quote look higher than the other guy's?" If you answer the same question on every estimate, answer it once on camera. It saves you time and shows you know what you're talking about.
• A customer saying a few words. A happy customer on their own porch carries a lot of weight. Get their permission in writing first - a text that says "yes, you can put this on your website" is better than nothing - and see our post on testimonials for what to watch out for.

How to shoot it on your phone without it looking bad

You do not need a videographer. You need ten quiet minutes and a few habits:

• Hold the phone sideways. Website video players are wide. A tall video ends up as a thin strip with black bars on both sides.
• Sound matters more than picture. People will forgive a slightly shaky shot. They won't sit through wind roar, a running compressor or traffic. Shoot somewhere quiet, stand close to the phone, and if you're outside, put your back to the wind. A cheap clip-on microphone that plugs into your phone makes a big difference if you plan to do more than one.
• Light in front of you, not behind you. Face the window or the sun. With the light behind you, you turn into a dark shape against a bright background.
• Prop it up. Lean the phone against something on a ladder, a truck mirror or a cheap tripod. Steady footage reads as more professional than any amount of editing.
• Don't script it word for word. Write down three or four points and talk through them. Reading a script makes almost everyone sound stiff. Take it three times and keep the one where you sound most like yourself on a normal estimate.
• Mind what's in the frame. No customer's house number, license plate or kids in the background unless they've said it's fine. Our post on photo permission on a customer's property covers the same rules for video.

Shorter is better. Most people decide in the first few seconds whether to keep watching, so say your name and what you do right away, not after an intro.

What not to put on your website

Some video does more harm than good:

• Stock footage. A generic crew in spotless hard hats is the moving version of a stock photo, and customers read it the same way: this could be anyone. We wrote about that in should I use stock photos on my website.
• Autoplaying video with sound. Nobody wants their phone to start talking in a waiting room. If a video plays on its own, it should be silent, and most of the time it shouldn't play on its own at all.
• Full-screen background video in the header. It looks impressive on a fast office computer and terrible on a phone with two bars of signal, which is where most of your visitors are. It pushes your phone number and quote button further away and makes the page slow to load.
• A long, music-heavy brand video. Two minutes of slow-motion shots with no one talking tells the customer nothing they need to make a call.

Where the video goes on the page

Put your introduction video near the top of the home page or in your about section, right next to your phone number or quote button, so someone who watches it and likes you can act right then. Job walkthroughs belong next to the photos of that job, or on the page for that service if you have a separate page for each service.

Always add a line of text next to the video that says what's in it - "Meet Dave, the owner, in 45 seconds" - so people know it's worth tapping. And make sure everything important in the video is also written somewhere on the page. Plenty of people won't press play, and search engines and AI assistants mostly read the words, not the video.

How to keep a video from slowing your site down

This is where most do-it-yourself sites go wrong. A minute of phone video can be a large file. Upload that straight to your web host and every visitor on a phone has to start pulling it down, whether they watch it or not. A slow site loses people before they ever see your work.

The usual fix is simple:

• Put the video on YouTube or Vimeo and embed it on your site, instead of uploading the file to your own hosting. They are built to stream video to phones at whatever quality the connection can handle.
• Show a still image with a play button and only load the full player when someone taps it. A YouTube player carries a fair amount of code of its own, and there is no reason to make every visitor load it.
• Turn on captions and fix them. A lot of people watch with the sound off, and captions help visitors who are deaf or hard of hearing - part of making your site usable for everyone, which we covered in is my website ADA compliant. YouTube makes automatic captions, but they often mangle trade words and town names, so read them over and correct them.

Shoot it once, use it in three places

The same clip earns its keep in more places than your website:

• Your Google Business Profile. Google accepts videos there up to 30 seconds long, up to 75 MB, at 720p or higher, according to its own help pages. That's often the first place a nearby customer sees you, before they ever reach your site. A 30-second cut of your introduction fits.
• Facebook, Instagram and Nextdoor. Post it once with a line about the towns you cover.
• Your estimate texts and emails. A link to "here's who'll be coming out" before the appointment is a nice touch that very few competitors bother with.

One honest note on search: don't add a video expecting it to push you up in Google. Nobody can promise that, and anyone selling video as a ranking trick is selling you something. What it reliably does is help the people already looking at you decide to call.

Where RunCabin sits

RunCabin builds your site with AI, then a web developer finishes every page, starting at $499 to build, then $39.99 a month for hosting. Our questionnaire has a spot for video right next to your photos: paste a YouTube or Vimeo link, or say you'll send the file, and we place it on the page so it doesn't drag the rest of the site down. You'll see your first version within 24 hours of sending your answers and photos.

No video yet? That's fine. The site works without one, and when you shoot your introduction next month you just ask and it goes in. The site is on your own domain, there's no long contract, and the domain stays yours if you ever leave.

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Related reading: what photos should I put on my website? · should I use stock photos on my website? · why is my website loading so slow?