Client Wants 7MB Video on Home Page

I would appreciate some feedback on something. I have a client who wishes to place a 7mb flash video on his home page. Is this a good idea? Here is a link to a development page -

http://www.reservationkey.com/projects/buzza/default_new.asp

I have limited experience with videos on homepages but I would think this could (and should) perhaps be incorporated elsewhere on the site, and not up front and center on the homepage. I guess I'd have to see how long it takes to start playing and compare that to how long the average viewer will stay on this page. If the latter is shorter than the former what is the point of having it there at all?

Shared hosting?
How much space has he/she got for bandwidth usage a month if it is?

Thats kind of the main issue.

You also have 25 http requests, around a 9 sec download time 2 me in the UK and their is no video up at the moment. The page currently stands at 356k in size, now add 7mb. I wouldn't wait to be honest.

Only 1 of those requests caches and is compressed and that is the Google's js.

4 images currently don't load, maybe development.

If you optimize every image it would knock at lease 4 secs off your download time alone, save you bandwidth and reduce the page size by at least 150k if not 200k.

Do that before you do anything else.

Jaza

7MB... that sounds like a pretty long movie to me, unless it's just the opposite of compressed.

first, i would see if you can compress that file down to a smaller size... if you can get it significantly smaller, I would consider putting it on the homepage.

if not... try taking a screen shot of the movie and using it as a linked-image to a page dedicated to that movie. that will save your homepage the burden of large load-times, plus it will funnel visitors to a content-specific page. keeping visitors engaged in your site (using methods like this) is more likely to generate sales.

Hope ur streaming it!

http://www.shell.com/

Look at this.