So you’ve finished creating your videoask, and now it’s time to start collecting responses!
Let’s take a look at some of the different ways to share your videoask 
Share the URL link
Each videoask has it’s own unique URL, you can find this URL in 3 different places:
Once the videoask is live, and before you receive any responses, you’ll find the link in the inbox here:
As soon as you start receiving responses, those options will disappear, but fear not you can find everything you need for sharing in the Share & Embed button:
From here you can copy the link any time, add variables to your url, and grab the code for sharing via email, or embedding your videoask as a widget or iframe on a website.
The final place to find the url is in the build area - you have two options here, one to open the live videoask, or if you just want to test it out without submitting any responses, hit the preview button
Top tip! If you want to share your videoask to do some testing with your team before you receive any real responses, add the parameter ?preview to the end of your videoask url and it will automatically set your videoask to preview mode for whoever clicks on the link.
This unique videoask url can be shared through social media or text message. When you share via social media the link will display a meta image or gif and when clicked this will open the videoask in a new window or tab.
Share via email
If you’d like to share via email, there are a couple of options available in the Share & Embed tab:
You’ll see here you can either send to one person or send to multiple people. This is great if you have a pre-existing contacts list that you’d like to send your videoask too.
You’ll notice when you send via email it creates a partial embed where the videoask appears as a gif in the body of the email. A respondent can then click on the gif to open the videoask in a new window or tab.
When you send to one person you’ll be prompted to enter a name and email address:
Once you’ve entered the contact details and clicked continue it will generate a small amount of HTML code that you can copy and paste directly into the body of your email to create that gif.
The contact details you previously entered are added as variables to the videoask url in the embed code, this means the contact information will be passed through to videoask so that the person receiving the email won’t have to fill out the contact form of your videoask, but you’ll still see the contact details appear in their response.
Right now email clients don’t allow a true embed of video content, which is why the videoask will open in a new tab to be interacted with.
There are some caveats to this method depending on what email client you use, for example this works for Gmail, but for other tools such as Intercom, you may need to use the email’s HTML editor to add the code.
If you want to send your videoask to multiple people, you won’t be prompted to add any contact details before collecting the code to use, so the videoask URL won’t include any variables. You can however manually update the URL in the code to include variables and merge tags to dynamically populate contact information.
We recommend adding the following variables:
#contact_name=
#contact_email=
Remember - without the email address of a respondent, you cannot reply back to them through videoask!
For more information on how to set up either of these options, check out the VideoAsk help center guide here.
Embed your videoask
There are two main options for embedding your videoask:
The widget embed will float at the bottom of your page or throughout your site waiting to be clicked on and interactive with:
Once clicked it will expand the modal and begin playing
You can customize your widget in the Share & Embed section - choose a call to action, widget style, position on the page and color. You can also select whether it’s dismissible or not (meaning a person can minimize it if they don’t want to see it).
Once you’re happy with the way your widget looks, click Get the code
Then copy code and paste inside the <body> tags of your page or the footer of your site.
You must have a valid SSL certificate to allow a widget to open on your site. If you don’t have one the videoask will open in a new tab.
If you want to update the design of your widget at any time, you will need to update the code on your website. The widget won’t automatically update if you change the design in VideoAsk.
Check out the VideoAsk help center guide for further instructions on how to set up a widget, plus step by step instructions for Squarespace and Wordpress.
The second type of embed available is an iframe embed. Embedding your videoask this way will place the video amongst your other content and allow people to interact with your videoask without leaving your site.
Once again, you’ll find the code you need for this embed in the Share & Embed tab of your videoask. This time you just need to copy the code from here and paste it into the HTML editor of your page.
You can embed a videoask on most websites, online store builders or CMS as long as it allows you to insert custom code or edit the HTML code of pages. There are some requirements for your embedded videoask to work smoothly:
- Your site must be compatible with iframes.
- Your website must have a valid SSL certificate (using https://). If we cannot detect a valid certificate the embedded videoask will display with a Reply button that when clicked will open the videoask in a new tab to ensure responses are submitted over a secure connection.
- Make sure to use the embed code provided in the app. Camera and microphone permissions are included in the code which are essential for respondents to be able to record answers.
The videoask will automatically be embedded as a split screen view, with video on the left and answer options on the right. If you want to adjust this so that the answers appear over the video you can adjust the layout of the videoask. To force “mobile view” simply change the width in the code (which defaults to 100%) to a numberical value less than 1024 pixels.
You can learn more about setting up and customizing your iframe embed here.
We also have step by step instructions for Wix, Squarespace, Wordpress and Shopify.
Advanced Embed options and load time
If you want to customize your embed further, and you have some technical skills up your sleeve, you might want to check out our help center article for Advanced embed options.
This features instructions on how to embed code dynamically with JavaScript, use callbacks and listen to messages, editing the z-index of your videoask plus there’s a code snippet library with a bunch of different examples of some fun ways to embed your videoask!
Warning: this page isn’t for the faint hearted, if you’re new to embedding we would recommend sticking to the widget and iframe options to begin with 
Do embedded videoasks affect load time?
The video content within a videoask is hosted by us, so embedding a videoask on your website shouldn’t have much impact on the load speed of your site.
It can sometimes be affected by your geographical location (ie relative proximity to our servers) as well as the method of embedding (iframe vs widget)
If you’d like to do some testing, the VideoAsk developer team have put together a page load speed test site here which shows some examples of videoask embeds along with a google page speed link so you can see how page load speeds can vary.
Let us know if you have any questions about sharing your videoask, or if you’d like to start a new VideoAsk conversation feel free to hit the new post button and share your thoughts!
