Videos

How and why to add videos to your pages.

Why include videos on your pages?

Videos are effective at explaining important and complicated processes, can save people time over reading through a lot of text, and are effective at encouraging viewers to take a specific action. Mass Digital’s research has shown that videos can help improve page performance on Mass.gov.

We’re continually improving accessibility standards on Mass.gov to ensure all constituents can access content, including videos. By using closed captioning or providing a full transcription of the video, search engines can scan the content within the video, which makes it available to assistive technologies like screen readers.

Need to create a video for your page or agency? Consider Mass Digital’s experienced creative team, which offers multimedia services to state agencies at competitive rates. The team specializes in live action videos, interviews, and motion graphic explainers.

Adding videos to pages

You can add videos to these content types:

• Information Details

• News

• Organization page

• Promotional page

• Service page

Currently, Mass.gov supports videos hosted by Vimeo and YouTube (though it's very difficult to block ads with YouTube videos; you can try by writing to [e-mail]).

The steps to adding a video are almost the same no matter which content type you're working on. The only difference is where you find the "Add video" button.

Find the "add video" button

On Information Details

Header media

Header media will appear below the title and short description but above the first section. It may use the full width of the page.

Under the "Overview" tab, find "Header media" and click "Add Video"

Finding the "Add Video" button in header media section.

Example of a video in the header media section.

Section content

1. Find the "Content" tab

2. Click "Section Content"

3. Click "Add Video"

Finding the "Add Video" button in section content.

Example of a video in the section content.

On News items

Click the "Main Content" tab, and then click "Add Video."

Finding the "Add Video" button on news pages.

Example of a video on a news item.

On Promotional pages

From the "Content" tab, videos can be added to the page's "Header section" or as part of a dedicated "Video section" further down the page. New or existing video files can be added to either section.

Finding the "Add Video" buttons on promo pages.

A draft page showing both a video in the header section (top) and a key message section (bottom).

On Service pages

Find the "Overview" tab & then click either "Add new file" or "Add existing file."

Finding the "Video link" section on a service page.

Example of a video on a service page.

Add a new video

Choose this option if you want to add a video you've never added to a Mass.gov page before.

1. Click “Add new file”

2. Give your video a title in Name. This will be visible across the CMS when users search for existing videos, so it is important to give it a specific name to avoid confusion. For example, instead of naming a video “filing taxes,” consider naming it “Filing your state taxes online for 2021". That way, you can find the specific video easier, and other users won’t link to your video by mistake.

3. Copy the "share" URL link of your video and paste the URL into Video URL

4. If you add content into Transcript and Video Description, Mass.gov will create a link to a page with your video and its transcript & description

Adding a new video in the CMS.

Add a video you've used before

1. Click "Add existing file"

2. Enter the title or part of the title in Media name contains. If you don’t see the video you are looking for at first, try a few different keywords that may have been used when uploading it.

3. Check the box to the left of the correct video and click "Select"

Searching for a video that has been used before on mass.gov.

(Optional) 4. If you need to update any of the information about the video, click the "edit" button

Editing information on an existing video in the CMS.

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