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How to Add Video Conferencing to Your Website

In the current digital landscape, video conferencing has become a powerful tool for businesses to improve internal communications, and customer experience and even host successful branded events.

With the global pandemic in 2020 and 2021, there has been a rapid acceleration of its adoption as people use Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or other solutions for various purposes, such as remote working or just catching up with friends.

Whether you are a small, medium, or large business, adding video conferencing to your website or other platforms can be hugely beneficial in providing a secure two-way communication channel and improving the visitor experience.

If you are wondering how to add video conferencing to your website or application, you have come to the right place.

In this guide, we will discuss all you need to know about embedding video conferencing into your website or app, answer some key questions such as how it can improve internal communications and customer experience, what security concerns to consider, and more.

Why Add Video Conferencing to Your Website?

It Facilitate Real-Time Two-Way Communication

Adding video conferencing to your website is a great way to facilitate real-time two-way communication that can dramatically improve customer experience.

Video conferencing enables customers to quickly and effectively interact with your brand, eliminating misunderstandings and errors in understanding their needs. This effective face-to-face communication will help build better relationships with customers by providing them with an opportunity to understand the values of your products and services more deeply.

In addition, video conferencing can be utilized as an ideal tool for sales purposes, allowing businesses to educate customers about offers and deals directly which increases the chances of closing a sale significantly.

Overall, adding video conferencing functionality to your website allows businesses to provide a much higher level of customer service while improving customer experience and relationships.

It Enables Digital Events to Assist Your Marketing Efforts

Adding video conferencing to your website allows businesses to reach their customers, clients, and internal stakeholders in an innovative and effective way.

By hosting high-quality virtual events such as webinars, digital product launches, keynotes, or even fully-fledged conferences directly on their websites, businesses can create much more integrated real-time experiences for their customers.

This is also useful in gaining and retaining customer loyalty by hosting smaller events like product demos, sharing client testimonials, case studies, etc. Video conferencing offers cost savings while providing a platform to build relationships with existing customers as well as grow new ones.

Not only do companies save money from not having to travel but they are able to reach a much wider audience. Furthermore, businesses are able to gain insight from the response of their customers and stakeholders in real time and target them more efficiently with tailored offerings.

In short, integrating video conferencing into your website offers numerous benefits that can enable businesses to reach out effectively to their target audiences and drive growth.

Improves Internal Communications

Video conferencing is quickly becoming an integral part of many organizations' daily operations. It greatly enhances the communication between remote and in-office workers, resulting in improved productivity, less confusion, and fewer errors.

By adding video conferencing to your website, application, or platform you can offer a more reliable connection with higher accuracy, allowing the team to stay better informed and connected than ever before. Video conferencing also brings added convenience so that meetings don't need to be scheduled around the availability of all parties.

With just a few clicks from any device with a web browser, everyone can join the same meeting at once making it easy for everyone to stay on track. Furthermore, features such as screen sharing allow teams to work together even when working remotely and the ability to record sessions eliminates the need for traditional note-taking.

With all of these features in place, you can be sure that your team has the best resources available for effective communication and collaboration.

These benefits make adding video conferencing an invaluable addition to your website, application, or platform. It allows remote workers to feel more connected with their organization as well as other members of the team and provides a reliable, accurate form of communication that will help improve morale and productivity within the team.

It is clear that by incorporating video conferencing into your communications platform you are providing an invaluable tool for improved internal collaboration.

How Website Video Conferencing Work

1. Building Your Solution From Scratch

Building a video conferencing solution from scratch is the most complex and costly option, but also offers the most freedom in terms of customization. It requires considerable resources to achieve an acceptable level of standards for features and reliability, so hiring an experienced team or outsourcing to an agency may be necessary.

Designing your own interface with custom branding elements and features tailored to your use case will provide the highest degree of personalization. However, there are many other aspects to consider such as maintaining the solution, adding new features, and keeping up with customer expectations which add further costs.

Hosting servers and ensuring reliability also need to be taken into account when budgeting for a project like this.

All of these can add up quickly both in terms of upfront web development costs as well as long-term maintenance costs. It is important to be aware of the time and effort needed to complete the development process, test the video conferencing solution thoroughly, and manage its upkeep in order for it to remain reliable and up-to-date.

All of these considerations have a direct impact on the overall budget of such a project, so it is essential to take them into account when deciding whether or not this option is viable.

Though it provides the most freedom in terms of customization, with all aspects taken into account this may still prove too costly for some businesses depending on their specific needs. Ultimately, making an informed decision about which approach is best for your business should include a careful analysis of both monetary and non-monetary costs involved.

2. Embedding Off-The-Shelf Solutions

Using off-the-shelf solutions for video conferencing on your website can be an affordable, convenient, and easy-to-implement option.

Popular video conferencing solutions such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams offer SDKs (Software Development Kits) and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow you to easily embed the video conferencing functionality into your website or application. In most cases, these services are very affordable, many of them even being free of charge.

The main benefit to this approach is convenience; you don't need to worry about developing your own custom solution and instead just adopt the existing features provided by the service provider.

However, there is also a downside in that you must accept the interface, design, and feature set offered by the service provider. This means that you won't have much control over customizing and personalizing the solution to your own needs, as this usually requires a custom-developed solution.

Integrating an API from a white-label live streaming solution is one of the most efficient ways to add video conferencing features to your website or application. It allows you to easily bypass the lengthy and expensive development process required for building a custom solution. With a white-label solution, you are provided with access to APIs which can be used without any coding expertise.

3. Integrating API From a White-Label Solution

White-label video conferencing solutions like Callbridge make it simple to include the service into an already established platform. Simple API integration means you may add the needed functionality to your platform with minimal effort.

This is a cost- and time-effective option because it allows you to make minor adjustments to things like the logo, color scheme, and layout. The iotum live streaming API also makes it possible to modify the service to meet individual needs and include any suggested enhancements.

How to Add Video Conferencing to Your Website via iotum API

Adding video conferencing to your website is an excellent way to engage and collaborate with customers, partners, and employees in real time. With iotum’s API, you can easily embed the video conferencing functionality into your website or web applications.

Before utilizing iotum’s API, it is important to ensure that your website is properly configured. This will guarantee that the video conference player works as intended.

To embed any of the pages on iotum with an iframe, make sure to set the src parameter of the iframe to its meeting room's URL. Additionally, be sure that the iframe has camera and microphone functions allowed and set at fullscreen.

Chrome requires a valid SSL certificate for the iframe to work correctly, while Chrome alternatives, including Internet Explorer and Edge require that all ancestors of iotum's iframe be from the same host.

Once these requirements have been satisfied, you can copy and paste the following code onto your website:

iFrame Video Conferencing API You will be able to embed any page on iotum with this same code format.

Embedding iotum’s Live Stream Player

iotum’s Live Stream Player offers a powerful solution to live stream video conferences directly from your website. With just a few simple steps, you can easily embed the Live Stream Player into your website and make it available for everyone. The Live Stream Player supports both HLS and HTTPS streaming standards, offering maximum compatibility with all modern browsers.

The Live Stream Player is easy to embed via an iframe – simply copy and paste the code below:
Live Stream Player iFrame

Make sure that when adding the iframe’s attributes, you allow for autoplay and full-screen features so that users have a smooth experience when accessing the player. The access code of the meeting room being live-streamed needs to be included in the code.

Customize iotum’s Video Conference Room

Customizing your video conferencing room is a great way to ensure that it fits perfectly with your website’s look and feel. With iotum's video conference APIs, you have the flexibility to add or remove any features on the video conferencing room as desired.

This includes customizing the Room URL parameters such as adding a ‘name’ parameter which allows users to skip entering their name when joining a meeting, or you can use the ‘skip_join’ parameter to allow users to join without being prompted with audio/video device selection dialogs.

The ‘observer’ parameter enables users who join with their camera off to still be part of the conversation but not have their video tile displayed. You can also use the ‘mute’ parameter to mute the user's camera or microphone by default when they enter the room.

Furthermore, you can decide what view is used for meetings with options such as gallery and bottom speaker views.

You also have control over which UI controls are displayed in your video conferencing room. This includes hiding or displaying features such as screen sharing, whiteboard, recording output volume, text chat, participants list, mute all button, meeting info settings, and fullscreen/gallery view connection quality.

All these features give you the flexibility to customize your video conference rooms according to your needs and preferences while ensuring that it fits perfectly into your website design. With iotum's video conference APIs, you will have the ability to create a custom video conferencing experience that will suit your website and ensure greater user engagement.

Using Strip Layout for Watch Parties or Gaming

Using a strip layout for video conferencing on your website is an effective way to provide users with a more immersive experience.

This type of layout is particularly useful if you’re hosting watch parties, gaming sessions, or any other activity that requires the majority of the screen to be devoted to the application.

When using this method, you can copy and paste the code below this will render the video conference in an iframe at the bottom of the room or application.

iframe watch party strip layout

This allows users to focus primarily on what they’re doing while also having access to chat and other features provided by the video conferencing service.

When setting up a strip layout for your website, it’s important that you plan ahead and make sure the dimensions of the iframe match the size of your page. If the dimensions aren’t correct, then users may be unable to see all of the video conference features or not see them at all.

You also need to make sure that any other elements on your website don’t interfere with the layout; if they do, it could cause problems for users when they try to access the video conferencing service.

In addition to making sure that everything is sized correctly, you should also consider how much bandwidth will be needed to support multiple participants in a single video conference.

Although most modern video conferencing services are designed to use minimal resources, larger groups could require more bandwidth than what is available on some networks or devices.

To ensure that users have a good experience, you may need to adjust the settings of your video conferencing service accordingly.

Using SDK Events and Actions to Manage Events in Real Time

The iotum WebSDK Events feature is a powerful tool for managing webinars and video conferences. Its events system allows you to register for an event, update user experiences with real-time data, and call API actions within the local conference room.

This way, administrators can tailor their events according to their needs with options available for customizing the user experience.

Registering for events
iframe for registering for events

Event Handling
iframe for event handling

For example, an administrator may wish to add additional features or UI elements to an event page in order to customize it further. With iotum’s WebSDK Events feature, this can be done quickly and easily through coding or automation of certain tasks that can be triggered when necessary.

For instance, if a speaker wants to present some slides during the event, a specific API action can be called to set up the slides on the page in real-time. Similarly, administrators may wish to update user experiences with live data such as polls or Q&A sessions; iotum’s Events feature allows them to do so by calling specific actions that update the webpage accordingly.

Additionally, the WebSDK Events system supports chat functionality which allows users to communicate during events in real-time. This way, participants and speakers can interact with each other while watching or presenting.

Including SSO (Single Sign-On)

Adding Single Sign-On (SSO) to your website is a great way to make it easier for users to access your app securely. With SSO, end users are able to log into their accounts without having to enter their username and password each time they visit the site.

Using host_id and login_token_public_key available from the user's endpoints, you can easily implement this authentication method into your application.

It is important to note that while the API authorization token must be provided in order for the SSO process to work, it should not be provided by your server. Instead, the endpoint must be visited directly by the user themselves.

This allows them to securely sign in with their own credentials instead of relying on your server for authentication.

Implementing SSO via Get (iFrame)

In order to add video conferencing to your website, you can implement single sign-on (SSO) through an iframe. This iframe should have its source attribute set to the /auth endpoint provided by Get (iFrame).

The necessary parameters that need to be provided are the host_id, which is the account number of the user and is retrieved from host endpoints; login_token_public_key, a host-specific authorization token also retrieved from host endpoints; and redirect_url, which indicates what page the user should land on after logging in. This could be the dashboard or a specific meeting room.

An additional optional parameter that can be used is after_call_url which allows for redirects to a designated URL after exiting the call. This URL must be a full one, including http:// or https:// if it's not within our domain.

SSO via Get (iFrame)

These parameters allow for easy and secure access to video conferencing on your website, allowing for more interaction with customers, colleagues, and other stakeholders without having to worry about security issues.

With these parameters in place, you can easily and securely add video conferencing capabilities tailored to your needs. The implementation of SSO through an iframe provides a robust solution that will meet the requirements of any website.

Conclusion

By utilizing a video conferencing API like iotum, you can quickly and easily add video conferencing capabilities to your existing website.

With iotum's comprehensive suite of features and customization options, you can ensure that the video conferencing player is presented in a way that aligns with your brand identity and provides the best possible user experience for your customers.

Furthermore, leveraging an API-based solution saves you the time and expense associated with developing a custom video conferencing solution from scratch. All in all, APIs are the ideal solution if you want to quickly add secure, reliable, and customizable video conferencing technology to your website.

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