When you think about eCommerce video, what do you think of?
Personally, I like to think of it as pie. Now, I’m an apple pie fan – but with Invodo being based in Texas, you of course have your all-important pecan pie, and of course the classic pumpkin pie. But… why pie?
Think for a moment about your eCommerce properties. You’ve spent a lot of time and money building the sites that you have today:
Getting them up and running
Keeping them secure
Managing them
Optimizing your merchandising experience
Thing is, even though you have a pretty good “meal” going, something is missing. The trick to getting consumers to make that buy decision hinges upon them understanding the product you’re offering to them well enough to change their mind the rest of the way, without losing them to a competitor. Besides being comfort food, pie makes a great analogy for eCommerce video because without it, the meal just isn’t complete. Without eCommerce video, consumers will be less likely to convert than without it.
Just as importantly, you have to understand how to make a good pie – the crust, the filling, the whole deal – or you have to find someone who you trust to make a pie you won’t be disappointed in serving to your family. We’re experienced in the full lifecycle of eCommerce video. Whether you have experience producing or releasing video or not, that doesn’t matter. We’ve got success stories under our belt with customers who’ve never produced video, with customers who have, and with customers who’ve even bought other platforms that just required too much work to keep running.
At Invodo, we are skilled at production, editing, and hosting video, and have created easy to integrate API-driven eCommerce video platform. Give us a call, we can help you to ensure your eCommerce experience is all you want it to be, with fully, easily integrated eCommerce video.
Happy Thanksgiving to our customers, readers, family and friends.
We have spent the last several years developing our market leading expertise in producing eCommerce videos that sell more products. Along the way, we’ve learned how to shoot the right kind of content in almost any environment – from the rough and tumble of the tradeshow floor to high end television studios and most places in between. No matter where we are, we’ve learned how to adapt to the environment to shoot videos that engage and entice consumers like no other content. In the past month, we’ve added a whole new trick to our bag of production goodies…OUR OWN FULLY OUTFITTED STUDIO!
We still love to hit the road with our gear and shoot clients at their headquarters. That hasn’t changed and likely never will. But having our own studio in our own building offers several distinct advantages from a production standpoint. First and foremost, we have a home base that allows us to churn out new content on a daily basis. In addition, it makes it easier to produce new types of content, like large product assembly, that may be more difficult to produce on the road. It also opens the door for a whole new model of content creation, where clients send us the products they want to shoot and we tap into our deep pool of talent and copywriters in Austin to produce the video in virtually real time with no extra effort on the part of your staff.
The new space booking up fast, so give us a call to help take your sales to the next level.
‘Flagship Retailer’ Program Gives Retailers More Videos at Lower Cost
Austin, TX (November 20, 2009)
Invodo, the hub for eCommerce video, announced today the launch of a program designed to help selected online retailers get more product video coverage. The offering is targeted at industry-leading online retailers to help them acquire the customized video content they need while offsetting the costs of their video program.
Participating retailers actively work with Invodo to recruit manufacturers. Invodo creates custom video content for the manufacturers to syndicate to the retailer’s site. The result is more videos for the retailer’s product pages at a lower cost, while the manufacturers get broader exposure across the retailer’s site.
“We’re excited to work with retailers to get more video content in front of consumers at a lower cost,” said Invodo CEO Craig Wax. “Everybody wins here – this program is a gain for retailers, manufacturers and consumers.”
About Invodo
Invodo is the de facto hub for eCommerce video, connecting manufacturers and retailers through the largest product video library in the world.
The immediacy of video drives conversion for retailers, consideration for manufacturers, and satisfaction for consumers. With a library of over 20,000 product videos from more than 2,000 manufacturers, Invodo syndicates the content consumers look for in making purchase decisions to over 1,000 eCommerce sites.
Based in Austin, TX, Invodo is funded by Sevin Rosen and S3 Ventures. Visit www.invodo.com or call 512.279.4800 to learn more about Invodo and its product video syndication services.
Practical Ecommerce recently did a short Q&A with Justin Foster, an eCommerce video proponent and the founder of The Video Commerce Consortium. Justin gave his overall thoughts on video and also touched on how retailers can, and should capitalize on known human behaviors to help drive eCommerce video results.
Apart from using video to explain a product’s features and benefits, video should contain a number of triggers to encourage consumer action. Whether it be a “Buy Now” button located in the player or a verbal cue from the presenter, the more triggers, the increased likelihood of conversion. Other aspects of eCommerce video, such as duration and overall style, are still debatable but one thing is for sure: Retailers must focus on differentiating themselves while presenting a clear and compelling message to make eCommerce video effective.
Invodo understands the ins and outs of eCommerce video and acts as a complete solution offering video production, distribution, and management. Video is the future of eCommerce and Invodo continues to shape the landscape to enable both retailers and manufacturers to sell, sell, sell!
We’d like to send our warmest congratulations to the winners of the 2009 Streaming Video Reader’s Choice Awards. EffinFunny took home the coveted award for ‘Best Online Video Startup Company – Content.’ ‘Legend of Neil‘ is outrageously funny and well executed, so kudos to EffinFunny!
In this awards ceremony well-known leaders (maybe you’ve heard of Microsoft and Adobe) competed with up-and-comers. That highlights that online video is a very young industry with a bright future and many surprises ahead. That environment draws adventurous companies like Invodo and so many others. Not knowing what will happen next is a big part of both the excitement and the opportunity.
We take our turn on the red carpet as a finalist as validation that we’re onto something. Bright companies and fantastic work were everywhere, but our eCommerce-focused library of product videos remains as unique as our ability to solve online retailers’ problems with the complete package of content, platform and syndication network. Thanks to the Invodo team for bringing us to this milestone, and to Streaming Media readers for supporting us.
Full coverage of the awards here. You won’t get a better snapshot of who’s who in the space anywhere, so check it out. (And Kyle, enjoy the netbook!)
Here at Invodo we’ve known for a long time that we’re on to something. We’re the only company that combines a huge product video library, with a video platform, and an extensive syndication network of online retailers. And it sure feels good when people outside our four walls recognize it as well.
That’s what happened early this month when Invodo was named one of three finalists for a 2009 Streaming Media Reader’s Choice Awards in the category of Best Online Video Startup Company – Content. Our nomination is a testament to the incredible team we’re building at Invodo. Way to go team!
The winner will be announced on November 18th. Stay tuned.
Forrester’s recent analysis of six video platforms is an interesting read. On the one hand it seems comprehensive, with 37 criteria applied rigorously. On the other hand, covering only six platforms leaves most of the market uncovered. A bit of an in-depth sampler, as it were. The always-insightful Will Richmond at VideoNuze calls out this contradiction, observing that the report is useful for a “first-cut evaluation of a limited segment of the market”.
Before evaluating platforms, though, I’d ask a simple question: what do we plan to accomplish with it? As a marketer, I plan to use it to sell more products. Very specifically, as an eCommerce marketer, I plan to use it to drive conversions. When evaluating any platform through that purpose-driven lens, two truths emerge.
First, all platforms have a lot in common. The basic use case, in eCommerce at least, is simple: users want to be able to view a video of the product at the point of purchase. Speeds, feeds, and types of encoding don’t matter to the end user, although the quality of the experience matters greatly. Other features and functions should be viewed with healthy skepticism. Always ask this simple question: how does this feature help the consumer’s decision process?
Second, the platform alone doesn’t solve the problem. As a businessperson, which is more important to you: your CRM platform or your customer data? Without that customer data you don’t have a business, just a CRM platform. And without the right video content, a video platform gets you about as far as a car with an empty gas tank.
Every phase of Internet evolution starts with a proliferation of platforms and ends with the realization that content is king. Should we expect it to play out differently in the eCommerce video space?
In the 15 years I’ve been watching the web evolve, I think that the last five are the most crucial in how eCommerce evolves. We’re moving from an era when putting up a website with a shopping cart was “good enough” to one where consumers have become very empowered (and very frugal, given the financial condition of the economy for the last several years). Today, consumers shop on price, and they like to make informed decisions before they jump into a purchasing relationship – regardless how small the item may be. We’ve all watched as user-generated content (UGC) has helped to empower the consumer, from the largest retailers to manufacturers and hoteliers and travel destinations alike.
I came to Invodo in October because I believe that the world of online video as a decision-making tool is literally just beginning, and the sky is the limit. Consumers want to know the “ins and outs” of a product before they buy; but they want to be informed in a casual, relaxed way. Think about it – when a friend tells you why he loves his new Motorola Droid, he does it in a calm, evangelical way. He doesn’t do it like a salesman trying to close you on a new car. We believe that the same is true when informing consumers. Invodo seeks to deliver unique content, in an efficient way, that helps consumers to make informed buying decisions and result in satisfied customers instead of returns due to the product not working the way the consumer might have thought it could or should.
Too many vendors today assume that organizations have:
Video content lying around, waiting to be published to the Internet
Experience in content editing
Experience in hosting video content
Familiarity with optimizing the SEO of their content to ensure maximum value
While different organizations may vary, at Invodo we’re pretty sure that if the above was the case, everyone would already have video content on their eCommerce site, instead of having plans for implementing it in 2010, as huge numbers of organizations do.
Our goal is to provide a great, rapidly evolving platform with world-class ease of implementation and incredibly compelling – yet “pain-free” content generation. We believe that we’re pretty unique in the industry in doing that, and we look forward to showing more and more customers how and why we’re different. It’s truly an exciting time to be working in the eCommerce video market.
For anyone who doesn’t follow Professional Basketball, Cleveland Caviliers superstar LeBron James is an All Star and MVP who helps his team win in multiple ways – he scores points, tightly defends opposing players, distributes the ball to teammates and provides rock-solid leadership. Because he is so good, he fills the arenas with sellout crowds and helps to sell a ton of team merchandise, which, in turn, allows his team to pay higher salaries for better players. It’s an economically virtuous circle.
eCommerce Video does the same thing. eCommerce Video helps online retailers win in multiple ways. It helps sell more products by boosting conversion rates (scores points), keeps people engaged on the site longer so they don’t go somewhere else to make their purchase (defends against opposing players), provides fertile ground for Cross Selling and Up Selling (distributes the ball to teammates) and sets eCommerce Vendors apart as leaders in their space (rock solid leadership).
As if that’s not enough, product videos are easily leveraged to draw more SEO traffic and can be utilized on video networks such as You Tube, Google Video and Blinkx to further expand views, which lead to even more sales (fills the stands).
We’re pleased to be cited as a source in a recent Forrester Report on adoption of online video. A few highlights from the report:
64% of customers who view videos find them “very useful” in making purchase decisions
A majority of the top 50 online retailers have video on their sites (last year, it was only 18%)
In driving results, the right type of content and the right placement are everything
Babies R Us, an Invodo customer, was shown as an example of eCommerce video
Any impact video has now may be the tip of the iceberg, as a minority of consumers currently view video on product pages – yet video drives substantial conversion improvement. As more users adopt viewing videos, it follows that the conversion uplift will increase.
The report, by Patti Freeman Evans with Cristina Bugnaru and Brendan McGowan, reaffirms that high growth in this space is just around the corner – and that forward-thinking online retailers are incorporating video into their plans.
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