Guest Post by Adam Figueira, Product Marketing Manager at Monetate
Online shopping lacks the physical experience that accompanies browsing and purchasing in a brick-and-mortar store. As a result, ecommerce retailers must constantly be on the lookout for new methods to showcase their products in effective and compelling ways.
One popular way that online retail brands set themselves apart from the competition and engage consumers more effectively during the shopping process is through the use of videos that tell a visual story about how products can be used.
Online merchants can incorporate video into their visitors’ ecommerce experiences in a number of different ways. Let’s examine six considerations for testing the effectiveness of how video performs on websites:
1. Video vs. No Video. Perhaps the simplest way for you to test the performance of video on your website is by segmenting traffic so a percentage of site visitors receives a video demonstrating the product on the product page while the rest receive the same page without the video. In a test like this, one version of the page would contain only a product photo accompanied by its description, while another version would contain a video of the product accompanying the details.
A major retailer that Monetate works with recently learned that seeing was believing with product videos. While management initially thought that the play button would obscure the product and confuse visitors, this assumption did not bear out when tested. In fact, the video version of the product page was more successful, and lifted the conversion rate by 1.26% while generating a significant projected annual revenue impact.
2. Video A vs. Video B. Another way to test the impact of video on your website is by delivering two different product videos to different groups of website traffic. A test of this nature is important when you have a number of merchandising videos to choose from (perhaps showcasing different product attributes or styles) and are interested in identifying which video is more likely to resonate with consumers, and ultimately influence sales.
3. Which Play Button Is the Best? 
You have countless options for enticing consumers to play a product video, but how can you be sure which one will have the biggest impact on whether the consumer decides to actually click ‘Play’? In order to make an educated decision, marketers should test different options of what the play command looks like and optimize all website videos towards the version that is shown to generate the most clicks, boost the add-to-cart rate, increase conversion, etc.
A few options for the play button include a semi-transparent overlay on top of the video itself that’s intended to make it stand out on the page, a play arrow that points to the right, or a version of the word play that appears somewhere on the image thumbnail, as shown in the example to the right from Altrec.com.
4. Auto-Play vs. Click-to-Play. You will want to decide whether to serve consumers video that plays on its own as soon as a page loads or video that has to be triggered by a user action before it plays. This can be tested by segmenting different groups of traffic to receive auto-play and click-to-play video options, and then determining what is more efficient for the particular goal you are trying to accomplish with each video.
5. Thumbnails, Titles and Descriptions. The video thumbnail is the first thing a consumer sees when visiting a page with a video. This important first impression can make or break a video’s success. Working under the assumption that more compelling thumbnails will drive more views, you should not neglect this essential aspect of merchandising the video on your website. Constantly test new thumbnail options to ensure you’re displaying the most successful image at all times.
While video titles and descriptions can seem like an afterthought compared to the production of the video, they are essential to the video’s ultimate performance—titles, descriptions and thumbnails are the foremost attributes that consumers use to determine whether they watch videos online.
6. Video Badging. Product badging, a simple way to do smart merchandising, is the modern version of what shopkeepers have been doing in-person with customers for decades: calling attention to product features and benefits to get shoppers to interact with the merchandise.
Badging represents a powerful psychological tool that taps into consumers’ inherent need to be directed toward particular products, and the same rule applies with video. Just like badging a product thumbnail with messages like “staff pick” or “free shipping,” you should consider implementing the same method with videos, as shown in the example below from FreePeople. The most important thing to remember when badging videos, of course, is to test different variations and iterations to identify the ones that perform best.
Lastly, and most importantly, the guiding principle behind testing whether video will make an impact on your business is to have a clear vision of your goals before you test video content. You have to understand what you want to achieve from video—whether it is driving traffic, increasing conversion rates, boosting the average order value, or something else—before integrating it into visitors’ website experience.
When testing to get the most out of your video efforts, ask yourself the following baseline questions:
• Who is the test for?
• What does the test show?
• When will the test run?
• Why are we running the test in the first place?
The answers will help establish clear goals for your video campaigns and serve as a guide when you work towards meeting or exceeding them.
Adam Figueira is Product Marketing Manager at Monetate, the leading provider of website A/B and multivariate testing, targeting & personalization.
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.
Guest Post By: Holly Krenek, Marketing Manager & Hillary Prey, Marketing Communications at Digby
Mobennials, or The Mobile Generation, are the most connected and affluent consumers today. Ranging between the ages of 13-44, Mobennials are hyper local, individualistic, self aware, and driving the mobile smartphone revolution. They come from Gen X, Gen Y and an even younger population ranging down to preteens. They are defined as always connected and always tuned-in whether it is to news, their social networks or favorite retail brands. They want tailored, interactive offers that empower them to make educated purchase decisions on their own and influence others to do the same. And they are never without their lifeline—their smartphone.
Even though these power consumers are always connected, they are not always listening. Retailers and branded manufacturers need to tailor their messaging across all multi-channel touch points in order to influence, create unique and valuable experiences and maintain the brand-consumer relationship successfully with these digital gurus. Mobennials’ savvy adoption of mobile and social technology has spiked the interest of all retailers and branded manufacturers, who have first handedly witnessed their utilization of mobile via purchases from rich applications, mobile websites and in-store mobile engagements. But how do you, as one of many retailers, successfully get your message in front of this mobile generation without having it lost in the noise?
Start by getting to know the audience. Almost half of smartphone owners (48.7%) are between the ages of 25 and 44, with the majority of those in the 25-34-age range. Find out what devices they are using and develop a mobile marketing, commerce and in-store strategy that provides relevant, timely and valuable offers and experiences that can be delivered in an optimized way through your mobile commerce site or rich App for the iPhone, Android or BlackBerry smartphone.
Also, think about how you can engage with Mobennials by leveraging mobile and social as the two are inherently intertwined. The median age of social networkers on mobile is 30 years old. Conversely, 13-24 year olds represent almost a fourth of all smartphone users (23.8%). While this percentage may not be as overwhelming, it does represent the future. 23% of teens (ages 12-17) already use their phones for social networking and 11% use it to make purchases. Get in with these young Mobennials early, gain their trust, and make them loyal followers—they will be your audience for years to come and they already have their demands.
Speak their language. If retailers want to remain relevant to this uber-connected group, they need to identify with the ways in which Mobennials consume information.
A great way to engage with loyal Mobennials is with insightful and visually educational videos. Retailers who offer videos via mobile or social outlets enhance the consumer connection to the brand. Videos must focus on store products, and provide exclusive information to the consumer with edgy and unique visual messaging to capture their loyal advocates attention. When executed correctly, the mobile and video correlation can lead to successful purchases both in-store and online for retailers, and gain value through strong communication to their Mobennial customers. Ulta is a great example if a retail brand that utilizes mobile and video to their advantage. See the example below of one of their amazing videos.
View content for Fusion Lip Plump.
Most recently, Nordstrom has enabled mobile checkout in their retail locations. According to the luxury retailer, approximately 5,000 mobile checkout devices will be incorporated in to their retail stores, escalating the power of mobile and technology for the company. Nordstrom sales associates can look up previous purchases of customers via an iPod Touch, and spend quality time with consumers on the sales floor with the implementation of the mobile checkout. Having one-on-one time with consumers is valuable to the retailer, and creates quality engagements between the company and its loyal customers. The company is also using the mobile checkout app to spread the word about special events and other promotions directly to shoppers based on their location.
In addition, the Nordstrom mobile-optimized website allows users to purchase items from their smartphones so their loyal customers can have access to products whether they are at home, on the go or in the retail store.
Wet Seal’s mobile and social presence has grown exponentially since 2008. Not only do they have a great and elegant mobile optimized website for their broad customer base, their iPhone application, iRunway, which launched in 2009, allows loyal customers to access collections of user-created outfits in the Wet Seal Fashion Community, view items and see outfits that go with that style, scan a barcode or enter the style number to view the outfits with that item, view most popular outfits, share outfits socially or via email to friends and family, and view store locations and information such as ratings and reviews.
Staying in frequent contact with Mobennials across every touch point is crucial to building and maintaining a strong mobile and social relationship with them. They have the largest word of mouth base and act as both influencers and the influenced. It may take some trial and error, but it is worth the effort to figure out how to successfully engage this affluent in-crowd.
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