We’ve recently received coverage in Mediapost, Retail Customer Experience and Website Magazine around a study we completed with the e-tailing group. Some of the findings seem to have struck a nerve in the industry – especially around what is sometimes called “the 30-second myth.”
OVPs (Online Video Platforms, the technology-only side of the business) are fond of publishing viewing time metrics showing how long viewers watch before clicking away. They then characterize that as insight into consumer behavior and urge retailers and brands to create shorter videos – regardless of the message to be conveyed or the quality of the content.
The problem, of course, is that their approach assumes that all content quality is the same, all product categories have the same level of complexity to communicate, and all audiences are equally engaged. Pretty big assumptions. That’s why we commissioned the research as a consumer-facing study. Rather than guessing about consumers based on clicks, we thought we’d directly engage them to find out what makes video content valuable to them. By combining that research with data mined from our network of close to 100 major brand and retail sites, and tempering that with insight from researcher Lauren Freedman, we hope to form a more complete picture.
Here’s the cool thing: we haven’t even formally released the study, and it’s already generated quite a bit of industry dialog. The findings on video length are only a small part of what we learned. We’ll have a better industry discussion when we can put that data in context. We’ll do that, with Lauren Freedman’s help, on Wednesday, February 8th during a Webinar, “Captivating Consumers through Cross-Channel Video.” We hope you can join us!
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
When I started at Invodo about 1 year ago, the primary hosting for applications was on physical servers in a datacenter here in Austin, TX. There were plans to move to an infrastructure that allowed better failover and geographic diversity, but work had not begun for the actual transition. All components required to provide service to end-users had been pushed out to the content delivery network, so the risk of the application infrastructure impacting clients and end users was very low. That made the relative urgency of accomplishing the move lower than other improvements to our technology at first, but beginning in 2011 we had a strategic goal of improving our system uptime/availability to 99.999% before the holiday season. After I joined, priorities aligned and we decided the time was right for the transition. Two of us then set out to make the move happen.
Reasons Behind The Move
While end-user service is all pushed to the content delivery network, several components of our infrastructure are necessary for managing that service and providing the full service offering to our customers. What this means is that a complete failure of our infrastructure should have no impact on end users, but could be seen as a degradation in service for our customers. Things like data analytics for the period of the outage and access to the tools we provide (such as to push new content or retrieve reports) would be unavailable to our customers.
One thing I have learned over the years is that no system is perfect. Any system that is supposedly incapable of failure will have a problem at some point and, since it is impervious to failure, it will take a significant amount of time to recover the system. Instead of trying to build the perfect system, we planned for failure. The primary goals of the new architecture were:
1. Focus on mean time to recovery (MTTR) for all systems so any outage is reduced to the minimum time possible.
2. Customers should not be impacted in any way unless it is a catastrophic failure of multiple systems, and even then, it should be the minimum impact possible.
3. Any given system can fail at any given time. Any individual server or system going down should be expected and ANY recovery necessary should be quick and straightforward, independent of what caused it to fail.
4. The architecture should easily survive the next 5 years, meaning how and when systems were to scale with increased usage had to be decided out of the gate.
There’s more than one provider of cloud-based hosting, each with their own focus and strengths. After reviewing providers in the context of our goals, we found that Amazon Web Services was the clear choice for how we wanted to accomplish them.
First Few Days On Amazon Web Services
Our first few days on Amazon Web Services were exceedingly scary. We had tested all of the components, we had verified our monitoring systems, but there were still lots of unknowns. Would the new infrastructure perform the same was as the previous one? Was our security model sufficient to provide access to all services? Were there any components that needed to communicate that we overlooked? The end result was a very smooth transition, even done in a way so that our customers wouldn’t notice a change. Before we were fully transitioned, Amazon Web Services had a major outage in one of the components. Numerous large scale companies ended up having issues because of the outage. However, thanks to our new infrastructure design, there was no noticeable impact for our customers. This helped provide validation that we were going in the appropriate direction for our architecture.
Extended Period on Amazon Web Services
We have now been on Amazon Web Services for quite a while. There have been a few more outages of one type or another on Amazon’s infrastructure and we have had multiple components fail and need to be recovered, all without noticeable customer impact. That is all great for normal operations, but what about the peak retail usage that starts just prior to Thanksgiving and ends just after the new year? In one day, we tripled the capacity of each individual server and doubled the number of servers that would be involved in handling the additional load. And the entire holiday season was reasonably uneventful (from a technical perspective). Looking back, had we been on our previous infrastructure, it might have required a lot more work to keep up with demand. We did not have the ability to rapidly scale up our infrastructure, we did not have the same detailed monitoring on our infrastructure and our ability to recover from faults in the infrastructure were significantly lower than they are now. In the final analysis, the uptime goal of 99.999% of critical services during the holiday season was achieved, in large part do to the migration to AWS.
Our previous infrastructure was not poorly designed. In fact, it was the previous design that allowed the move that we did in the period of time we did it. Everything about the move did not go according to plan, but through hard work and ingenuity we managed the transition without negative customer impact. Looking back, the take away is that what worked for you yesterday will not work for you tomorrow and that planning needs to happen today.
Matt Brace, Invodo Lead Envisioneer
Ever wonder how you could improve your company’s website to set yourself apart from your competitors? That’s what I thought. Turns out you aren’t alone.
Luckily for you, Internet Retailer has a stellar agenda laid out for the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference in Orlando, FL, February 13-15th.
Since this event is clearly something you want and NEED to go to, allocating your time is going to be a challenge! In an effort to help, I’m sharing my Top 5 Must Do’s for IRWD 2012.
1. Get Twisted with Cirque du Soleil!
Orlando is synonymous with Walt Disney World but did you know that Downtown Disney, which is outside the park, has a ton of fun offerings as well? For example there is the Cirque du Soleil- La Nouba show. La Nouba is a show that can only be seen in Downtown Disney; the show’s title translates to “to party, to live it up.” La Nouba is a visceral show receiving 5-star audience reviews.
“[When an 11-year old boy ‘s father asked him how he liked the show the boy responded with] “My throat hurts.” “Why?” asked the father, [to which his son responded] “I think, I forgot to breathe.”” — The Orlando Sentinel
2. Stop by Booth #211!
Why? Because we want to meet you! Soon we will be releasing an e-tailing group research report that shows consumers shop with video in a different way than you probably think they do. Come get the inside scoop on some surprising new research. Say the secret password, “video strategy,” and we will give you a sneak peek at this invaluable report. We will also hook you up with our secret weapon to boost your energy and help you power through the conference!
3. Attend the Session: “Design 101: 10 Best Practices to Pick From the Pack”
A key component to any modern website design is delivering a site that can operate on any platform effectively. Mike Sidders, VP of E-Commerce at ShopKo Stores Operating Co., and Todd Luckey, Senior User Experience Specialist at Usability Sciences, will host this session on Tuesday, February 14th from 11:15a- 11:45a and share their best practices for modern retail web design. You won’t want to skip this one!
4. Swim with the dolphins at Discovery Cove!
Need I say more?!? If you’re like me, you love animals and have always wanted the opportunity to swim with a dolphin! If not, you can always just chill out in the lazy river or take a snorkeling adventure!
5. Attend the Session: “Revving up Your Retail Website with Online Video”
On Wednesday, February 15th from 12:00p- 12:30p, Invodo’s own Craig Wax is partnering up with Office Depot’s Director of E-Commerce Searchandising, Shannon Wu-Lebron, to discuss how to deploy and merchandise video in a way that improves the user experience and drives conversion, SEO, and more. Don’t miss out!
If you have any questions or would just like to get some more ideas on things to do at IRWD don’t be shy and give us a shout! You can also schedule a specific time to discuss video at IRWD right here!
It’s becoming clear that video is on the verge of transforming the way consumers shop. Recently, more and more people are taking note. Here is some notable coverage from the past weeks alone:
MediaPost featured Invodo in a recent article about how video viewership is positively impacting purchasing behavior in online retail. The article cited a 9x increase in 2011 retail video views at the start of the holiday season as well as a Forrester report showing improved SEO due to video. Daisy Whitney goes on to discuss what we’ve known all along—video sells. Check out the full article here.
Last week Internet Retailer published an article entitled Retailers need to prepare for the online video wave. Internet Retailer recognizes that video is going to be a hot topic at their upcoming Web Design & Usability Conference in Orlando, FL and took this opportunity to point curious minds towards our session. On February 15th Invodo CEO Craig Wax will be discussing how video can be used most effectively while also providing good and not so good examples of what retailers are doing with video today. Read all the details here.
2012 is here, and pundits are already making their predictions. (We are too). But first let’s look back on an amazing 2011, with a focus on Q4 and the holiday season.
This was a record-setting season for online retail. Cyber Monday was the busiest ever, at $1.25 billion according to Comscore.
To dive a little deeper into the record-setting activity that occurred in eCommerce video, we dived into data from across the Invodo client base. That’s the largest network of video-enabled retailers in one place. Tens of thousands of videos across about 100 retailers and major brands gives us a good read on how shoppers used video during 2011 and during the holiday season. Key learnings:
Today’s shopper relies on video more than ever – and more experienced shoppers lead the trend. As previously reported, Cyber Monday video views increased by 897% and Black Friday video views increased by 337% over 2010. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Looking at all of Q4 2011, video views increased by more than 3x. Why was Cyber Monday even bigger? Good question. My take – Cyber Monday shoppers are the most sophisticated and dedicated online shoppers. They know how to take full advantage of the tools available to them, from reviews and free shipping to video and 3D interactive experiences.
Shoppers prefer Facebook and email for sharing. 46% of Q4 video shares were on Facebook. Email was nearly as popular, accounting for 40% of shares, and Twitter was used 14% of the time. If you don’t have sharing enabled for your videos, you’re missing out on an easy opportunity to get additional views and sales.
Today’s holiday shopper is wired, multichannel, and multiplatform. Mobile browsers accounted for 12% of holiday season video views on Invodo client sites. Over half of that – 6.3% – was iPad, and Android was 3.5%. I saw plenty of people using their phones in store aisles to check prices and availability as well as to get product information without waiting for a store associate.
That’s a lot bigger than any discussion about HTML5 versus Flash. The same shopper may research on a laptop, stop into a store to kick the tires, view a product video on their phone while in the aisle, and ultimately purchase on their iPad. Are you leveraging your videos and other content smoothly across these touchpoints?
A final point: if this season was groundbreaking in terms of tablet usage, I can’t wait to see what happens in 2012. Reason: the Kindle Fire’s adoption rate has overtaken the iPad’s. Amazon has planted an Amazon-connected storefront in the hands of millions of consumers. Am I the only one who sees eCommerce implications there? How will that affect Apple’s iPad strategy?
Shoppers are vocal about which videos help them shop – and which do not. Shoppers using Invodo’s Ratings and Comments feature rated videos an average of 4.19 out of 5 stars. Apparel, do-it-yourself and toys received the highest marks, but multichannel retailers scored well across all product categories.
In a subset analyzed for content, videos that included a demonstration of product features receives almost a full star more than videos that did not. User comments on videos without clear product demonstrations included responses such as “I expected to see the product in use.” This is a “video coming of age” phenomenon. Consumers expect video, like any other site content, to provide value above and beyond simply creating motion to catch the eye.
Video drives conversion across product categories, but does so differently depending on type of product and type of shopper. Given the size of the Invodo client base and the depth of our analytics, there’s some surprising and useful data there. Stay tuned – that’s coming in a second post as soon as I have an hour to crunch the data and an afternoon to put it in context. If you’re not subscribed to the blog, this might be a good time to sign up.
It always makes us smile when our clients succeed! Several Invodo clients recently received recognition as one of Internet Retailer’s Hot 100 E-Retailers of 2012. What boosts companies like this to the top in eCommerce? Site optimization, personalization and videos that help consumers navigate purchase choices emerged as front-runners in the mix.
Babies “R” Us was noted as having an exceptional online store that helps shoppers find exactly what they are looking for. Babies “R” Us employs video to showcase products as well as to offer service support. In the example below, a virtual advisor explains the perks of the Rewards “R” Us program.
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Office Depot made the list for their multi-channel approach that enables customers to shop and buy anywhere. Their scan-and-go mobile app makes ordering office supplies easy, with only a few swipes of a screen. As you can see below in the videos, Office Depot pros give detailed information along with demonstrations to equip shoppers to make the best purchase decisions.
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View content for ofd0023-j122 Swingline Optima Grip Elctric Stapler.
December is off in a flurry! The weekend after Thanksgiving blazed the trail for online shopping with a 33% increase in online spending compared to last year (IBM). We wanted to know how shoppers used video during their busy weekend. So, we took a look at the numbers. Sure enough, online video views have boomed across eCommerce sites, and engagement is up across the board. Here are some of the key findings from the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend.
• On Black Friday video views increased 337% over the same day last year
• On Cyber Monday, there was an 813% increase in video views over 2010
• Video views on Cyber Monday were 2.5 times the number of views on Black Friday
Look at those numbers skyrocket! It makes sense that video views were significantly higher on Cyber Monday as it is the preferred day for online shopping. The increase in views YOY shows how video has proliferated on retail sites and is becoming the preferred way of gathering information when shopping online.
Social sharing was up for videos as well. On Friday, Facebook dominated for video sharing at 50% with email coming in at 36% and 14% for Twitter. On Cyber Monday, Facebook and Email tied at 43% with Twitter coming in third at 14%.
Holiday shoppers had a lot to say by rating and commenting on the videos they watched. Invodo videos averaged ratings of 4.3 out of 5 stars, a higher average than videos from other sources. Invodo knows how to create eCommerce video that sells, and consumers can see the difference. Comments included words like:
How does video affect conversions? Watch the on-demand Internet Retailer webinar in which BizChair.com explains how video helped them boost average ticket, reduce returns and increase conversion rates.
As online shoppers, we’re no strangers to videos on retail sites. With business goals in mind, we may even wonder where the video is coming from, why some brands seem to have a more robust video presence than others on retailer sites, and how those videos influence purchase rates.
Due to visible benefits of increased conversions, enhanced customer experiences and improved SEO, retailers are deploying as much video as they can, but need brand manufacturers to fill the gaps. Brands, or manufacturers, who bring video to their products will be the early winners in a crowded market where the consumer’s voice has so much influence. Here are three ways brands can leverage video content to maximize results:
Brand Videos on Retailer Sites
It’s no secret that retailers want video. Earlier this year the eTailing group reported that 73% of online retailers used video on product pages in 2010. For a major retailer selling thousands of products spanning hundreds of brands, universal coverage is probably not feasible. But, brands can gain an advantage and break through competitive noise by supplying video to their retailer channels.
Video viewers have been shown to purchase at higher rates and greater volumes than site visitors who don’t view video. In fact, according to Comscore, video viewers are 64 percent more likely to purchase and, on average, stay on the site for two minutes longer than other site visitors. Innovative brands that take advantage of this opportunity are a step ahead in terms of customer engagement and brand exposure, which greatly affect shopper behavior.
Brand Videos Link Social Media Channels to Purchase Pages
According to a recent survey by the Content Marketing Institute, 50 percent of manufacturers surveyed had established a YouTube presence for brand-building and connecting directly with consumers.
Click the image to view a video that shows how Crocs leverages video content on their YouTube channel with a clickable overlay button that links directly to the product page. This way, people who view the video can be easily directed to the brand’s site, making a more fluid purchase process.
Brand Videos on Brand Sites
Of course, brands will want to leverage video content on their own site, but that strategy can extend beyond product videos. Brand sites that offer instructional or how-to videos may have a better chance of standing out to the consumer. The brand website is an ideal place for consumers to be directed to when they are researching or looking for help. These types of videos guide shoppers through the purchase process, leading to higher conversions.
Engage Consumers Anywhere they Shop
Placed on the brand’s website, a retailer’s site, social media pages, viewed from a kiosk, or launched on a mobile device from an in-store QR code scan, brand (or manufacturer) video engages consumers, boosts sales and projects the brand voice across all shopping channels.
See more examples of Invodo Video for Brands here.
Guest Post by Gary Lombardo, Commerce Solutions Marketing at Demandware
Shopping is an interactive sport. While smartphone wielding consumers are the main players of the sport, retailers are the ones who set the field of engagement, both online and in the physical world. A variety of methods, tools and technologies exist for retailers to engage consumers, but few are as mature and easy to utilize as 2D codes.
The Rise of 2D Codes
2D codes are two dimensional (hence the name “2D”) images encoded with information. The information can be decoded with a camera-driven scanning application, which will perform a variety of functions including displaying texts, linking to a specific URL, or linking to video content. 2D codes are used for a variety of industrial uses, but 3 key types are used for consumer-facing uses:Quick Response Codes (QR Codes), Microsoft Tags (MS Tags, aka High Capacity Color Barcode) and barcodes. There are different reasons why retailers would use one type over another.
QR Codes and MS Tags in particular have risen in adoption among consumers, especially those that use smartphones. Smartphones provide consumers with the hardware (including the camera) and a platform for the software applications (i.e. ScanLife, ShopSavvy, MS Tag and others), making 2D codes easily accessible and practical for shopping like never before.
Forrester estimates that adoption of 2D code reading applications has risen to 15% in 2011 among smartphone shoppers and is expected to continue to rise in the future. Indeed, it’s difficult today to walk down the street or into a store or open a newspaper or magazine without finding a 2D begging to be scanned.
Uses of 2D Codes
2D codes are applicable throughout each stage of brand engagement with the consumer, which make them a great tool for retailers to create a more interactive shopping experience and connect the online and physical worlds. If applied properly, the benefits retailers can reap include greater brand recognition, greater online and in-store sales, an increase in average order value, greater customer satisfaction and repeat purchases, as well as reduced return rates and support costs. To realize these benefits, retailer should focus the application of 2D codes around four main uses, namely to:
1. Create brand awareness with consumers.
2D codes are a great tool for marketers to capture the attention of shoppers—particularly those on the go with mobile devices and those inundated with other information sources– to create market awareness and craft brand perception. Barney’s New York used QR codes as part of a “Back Stage Campaign” in early 2011 where they displayed ads in the New York Times and online that contained QR codes which linked to online, content-rich “backstage” stories of the products. This energized the approach to traditional advertising and helped drive brand awareness among consumers who may have otherwise not been reached.
2. Share information to educate consumers.
2D codes can guide potential consumers towards purchase by providing them information about products, services, events, and more. Columbia Sportswear produces world-class outdoor apparel for consumers who are interested in learning about how the product was produced, what materials were used to produce it, what conditions the products are meant to be used in and what additional features the product contains that may not be readily apparent. They use QR codes as part of in-store signage and hangtags on products in company stores, as well as other retailers who distribute Columbia gear, to provide consumers with more information about products through video and other content while standing in the store aisle.
Electronic Arts, a leading producer of video games, provides its distributors with in-store digital signage that contain QR codes for content samples of their products. For their game Dragon Age II, shoppers could scan the QR code and get a video demo of the game.
3. Drive consumers to purchase.
2D codes give retailers a unique opportunity to convert sales, especially when they help solve specific problems consumers face, such as cutting down on checkout time or offering immediate rewards. In addition to using QR codes to share information about how their coffee beans were produced, Ethical Beans Roastery and Ethical Bean Xpress Café give consumers the ability to scan QR codes on their products, allowing shoppers to skip waiting in lines and pick up the orders at checkout. Axis Salon, a trendy hair salon in Washington DC, uses QR codes in its storefront that link to videos featuring beauty icons and coupons for discount services—all helping to drive consumers to purchase.
4. Foster customer loyalty post-purchase.
After the sale, 2D codes can drive foster customer satisfaction by providing extra services, support and personalized offers. Nike uses QR codes in its stores to allow consumers to “Like” a product on Facebook, enabling consumers to share their affinity for a brand through recommendations on Facebook. A logical extension to this concept would be to provide rewards (loyalty points, mobile coupons, immediate discounts, etc.) for shoppers who provide such feedback. Ikea entertained the idea of using QR codes to provide video instructions on how to assemble products, such as furniture, making the post-purchase process a more enjoyable one. 
Similarly, QR codes can serve as an easy way to locate product manuals online or warranty information, which could be a real benefit to consumers who often do not keep such information that come with the products, and need to locate them immediately when something goes wrong. This would help cut down on support costs for retailers, in addition to fostering customer loyalty post-purchase.
The Future of 2D Codes
While 2D codes have reached a level of maturity where they are an effective tool for retailers today, they still have a number of challenges to overcome– standardization of code technology (open QR codes v proprietary MS Tags), reader availability, and deeper level consumer awareness beyond where it’s at today– optimally reaching the same level of consumer awareness that UPC barcodes enjoy today. They also face long-term obsolescence from Near Field Communication (NFC), but that is a ways off in the future given NFC nascent state at the present. Bottom line is that 2D codes do not require a lot of time or money to implement and can have large potential returns, so retailers should experiment with them while the cost of learning is low.
Gary Lombardo leads Commerce Solutions marketing at Demandware, a trusted, global leader in on-demand ecommerce. As part of his role, he helps retailers navigate the world of multichannel, mobile and social commerce. Gary tweets @garylombardo and can be reached via email at glombardo at demandware dot com.
Be sure to download the whitepaper “Quick Response Codes in a Multi-Channel World” to learn more about how retailer’s should take advantage of 2D codes.
You’re a retailer or manufacturer with thousands of products. You’ve seen the clear results that video has delivered to other brands, so you’ve committed to launching a video program next quarter. You’re likely to start with a handful of videos and track the impact on conversions and customer experience with these before launching more comprehensive coverage.
But wait! How do you choose which products merit video content?
Step 1) Focus on a Single Category
If you have thousands of products and decide to sprinkle video on 50 isolated pages across multiple categories throughout your site, the chances of a visitor finding and viewing one of these videos could be slim.
Especially since the initial video deployment will focus heavily on measuring results, I recommend choosing one category and covering as much as possible within that set. This way, you’ll maximize the likelihood that your visitors will encounter multiple videos while shopping that single category. You can then measure the performance against other categories that don’t have video.
To choose a category, look at places where customers are naturally curious. What categories peak consumer curiosity, and where can you empower them to make better purchase decisions? One option is to choose a category with products that are more complex or require explanation. You may also choose a category that already sells well. The idea, during your initial test, is to get as many views and visits as possible so you can determine whether adding video to the content mix makes a difference.
Step 2) Introduce Video Early in the Shopping Experience
Consider what questions shoppers may have while browsing products within a category. You can reduce confusion and increase sales by creating a video, or series of videos, that will inform customers about how to confidently shop within the category.
For example, suppose you are a company that sells consumer electronics and are highlighting a series of new tablet devices. With many product form factors, functionalities, operating systems, and features available across a category like this, you can be guaranteed that your customers will have lots of questions. A few short videos about these topics, prominently placed at the category page level, will go a long way toward eliminating confusion and building confidence in making the right choice.
By offering category education videos, the seller can help guide shoppers in the appropriate purchase direction. Once the shopper understands the big picture, they are ready to dig into the details of different products and select the one that best fits their needs.
Step 3) Choose the Right Products for Video
The next step in this process is to choose which specific products merit video coverage. There are myriad factors to consider: product complexity, price, popularity, placement, profit margin and more. We’ll discuss the nitty gritty of product selection in Part 2 next week.
Leave a comment to let us know what questions you have!
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