I’ve read several posts and articles lately about the impact of user-generated video content (UGC video for short). It can seem like a powerful tool, helping knock down two important barriers to launching a video program. First, it helps get around the challenge of producing by pushing the burden to your customers. Second, there’s an argument that consumers are more easily influenced by UGC video, because it comes from someone like them.
There’s some truth to the first argument if coverage is a bigger concern than ROI. The second argument has been soundly proven wrong by research conducted by the e-tailing group and released earlier this year. Retail Customer Experience summarized the findings here or download the full report, sponsored by Invodo, at this link.
And now Comscore has released a report that compares the impact of UGC video with professionally produced video. Like the e-tailing group research, it shows that professionally produced video has a higher impact on consumers than UGC video. (30% higher impact, in fact, based on a 24.7% lift for professionally produced video vs an 18.7% lift for UGC video). Here’s what adds credibility to the findings: the research is sponsored by EXPO, a platform for UGC video. That makes the findings a bit like Coke winning the Pepsi challenge. We can be pretty sure that this research isn’t biased.
The report also finds a higher impact when consumers view both professionally produced video and UGC video together. That leads Jack Loechner to make a case in MediaPost that a retailer or brand should deploy both to realize the full impact. As a guy who’s on the ground helping retailers and brands launch video programs, though, I have to disagree with his conclusion for two reasons.
First, only a minority of consumers will choose to view both videos. That means that the “synergy” the report suggests will, in reality, be realized only on a small percentage of transactions. The second consideration is the bigger one. Where you are in your video program? If you’ve covered all your key products with video, the recommendation to further increase lift by adding UGC video makes sense. If – like many retailers and brands – you still haven’t covered all your key products, the math based on Comscore’s numbers would say that there’s higher return in broadening that product coverage first.
Kudos to EXPO for sponsoring the research and adding to everyone’s knowledge about how video impacts business. User-generated video has a place in the market now, and that place may well grow as the market evolves and matures. For now, when I look at the data combined with an understanding of where retailers and brands are in adoption of video, I think businesses should start where they see the highest ROI. UGC is a consideration for the not too distant future – but it’s not where most retailers and brands should be focusing their video efforts.
Online retail started with product descriptions long before consumer ratings and reviews were added. And in the same way, professionally produced product videos will become table stakes long before UGC video attains similar status.
See it differently? Let me know in the comments.
After opening with a $152MM weekend ten days ago, “The Hunger Games” remains the top box-office draw in the US. It’s now up to $250MM, and there’s speculation that strong word-of-mouth from those who’ve seen the film could drive it to dominate the box office for a third weekend. Clearly the movie, based on Suzanne Collins’ teen novel about Katniss Everdeen, has both buzz and staying power.
The story’s intended to teach life lessons, but it It also has lessons for retailers, brands and other companies creating video for business. (When you enjoy your work as much as we do at Invodo, nearly everything relates to it). Here are five lessons I took away:
1. Question the accepted ways of doing things. In Panem, the dystopian setting for the story, the twelve Districts surrounding the Capitol once rebelled. As punishment, two teenage representatives from each District must compete in the annual Hunger Games, a televised battle to the death with only one winner.
It’s implied that this functions as some sort of social control by giving the populace just the right mix of hope and fear. This is a great setup for the story but doesn’t, when you think about it, make a lot of sense. (Unless you think that “Jersey Shore” and “Ice Road Truckers” are similar conspiracies to keep us in line). In order to enjoy the movie, you just have to accept it and move on with the story. Maybe it’ll make more sense when I finally read the book.
However, when you’re launching a video program, you’ll want to question things that don’t make sense. You’ll hear arguments that your videos have to be short, thirty seconds or less in some cases. And someone will probably make a claim that user-generated videos are inherently more credible. Question those assumptions, because they may not hold. In fact, recent research shows that consumers are willing to watch two minutes or longer for video that genuinely helps them with a purchase decision, and they find professionally generated content more trustworthy.
2. Show your audience what matters to them. Once the combatants (“tributes”) are selected and trained, they must demonstrate their skills to potential sponsors. This, Katniss’ mentor explains, is crucial. Sponsors provide supplies that can make the difference between life and death, so “make sure they remember you.” Katniss, an accomplished archer, takes his advice to heart and startles a bored crowd by putting an arrow through the apple in the mouth of the main course on the buffet table. It scares the heck out of them – and they remember her.
Like the sponsors in the movie, your potential customers are dealing with a great deal of noise and distraction. If you want their attention, you have to earn it by clearly showing something that matters to them. If they’re shopping for a product, cut to the chase and show them the features that matter. If it’s archery they’re after, take aim and let fly like Katniss did. Either way you’ll cut through the noise and get their attention.
3. Focus on what matters in the long term. Another bit of mentoring Katniss acts on is the advice to avoid getting drawn into the immediate battle for weapons and food when the tributes are first released in front of a “cornucopia” brimming with supplies. Instead, she focuses on what’s needed for survival – finding strategic high ground away from the others as well as a supply of water. By doing this she avoids the initial pitched battle over resources and is better positioned for long-term survival.
It can seem like there’s a cornucopia of shiny objects to distract you when you’re launching a video program. The prospect of going viral is only one of many shiny objects that will tempt you. If water is what really matters for survival, producing and deploying effective content across your site and product catalog is what really matters for a video program. Analytics are important, but look for ways to ensure that analytics and customer feedback are a seamless part of the production process. A fully integrated workflow that brings it all together provides a real advantage over a competitor more focused on the shiny objects.
4. Think and act strategically. Katniss may seem like an underdog, but she is a strategist throughout – whether evening the odds by purposely destroying a stockpile of weapons and food, or using a personal situation (I won’t give everything away) to manipulate the Gamemaster into changing the rules. Strategy can trump superior firepower and perhaps even allow a cunning combatant to take on the established power structure.
Strategy is a plan designed to achieve a vision. So your video strategy starts with the vision, and the vision leads to one or more goals. Perhaps it’s increased conversion, perhaps it’s SEO benefit, perhaps it’s customer experience. Once you’ve defined those goals, define the metrics that matter. It’s worth remembering that many video platforms excel at measuring what matters to publishers, yet can’t measure the single most important metric for a retailer or brand – conversion lift. By knowing what your objective is and what metrics tell you if you’re achieving it, you can ensure that your video program is deployed strategically rather than as a vanity or me-too project.
5. You can’t do it all yourself. Even in a winner-take-all game, Katniss bonds with a younger combatant named Rue and works with her to defeat an alliance of stronger enemies. And she ultimately pairs up with Peeta, also from District 12, to win the game by redefining the rules and facing down the Gamemaster.
A successful video program isn’t launched by one person. It delivers results to a team of stakeholders and it’s smart to involve them early to gain buy-in. Identifying stakeholders (ecommerce, brand, creative, merchandising) and bringing them to your side is crucial. Just as important is the selection of a video partner. Select a partner who is expert in the type of production you need, can deliver metrics to prove it, and is able to scale beyond the capabilities of an in-house program.
And as you go forward with your video program, may the odds be ever in your favor!
We had great attendance on yesterday’s “Captivating Consumers through Cross-Channel Video” webinar.
Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group debuted results from a survey into how over 1,000 consumers use video during the shopping process. Judging by the questions attendees asked, interest was high and so was the level of sophistication of the attendees.
We couldn’t get to all the questions during the session, so I’m answering a few more here.
Q: Is buying video production services ROI-positive for an etailer?
A: Yes.
(pause)
OK, sounds like you want more detail. Our clients consistently report realizing ROI based on the business goals they set.
ROI is based on deciding which needle you want to move and why, and on how much you spend to move that needle. For Bizchair.com, increasing sales with video was a key goal. They found that the 13% of their site visitors who viewed video accounted for 33% of their sales. Stacks and Stacks reported increased sales with video as well. Living Direct had increased engagement as a key goal, and realized that with a 9% increase in time on page. And, as we learned in the webinar, consumers consistently say that quality matters. That’s why our clients choose to invest in well-produced, but cost-effective,video production.
Q: What has been the reaction from online retailers to the idea of category videos versus product-specific videos?
A: There’s certainly value in both. It’s attractive to leverage your video investment across a category at times. That said, I think the place to start is with your business goals. Analyze your site traffic and customer base, then do the math to determine where you can have the most impact. Product-specific videos are attractive in that they should pay off in clearly incremental sales, based on conversion tracking and A/B testing. That makes the business case easy to build. However, if you’re converting well on the product page but not doing as well in moving consumers down the funnel, you might want to start at the category level.
And – final note – a video gallery can be a great way to leverage your investment in product-specific videos. One video, two use cases, two locations. And if you do it right, you can index for category-level search terms in the gallery while indexing for product-specific search terms on the product page. That brings the right searchers to the right pages, making the most of your video SEO.
Q: Do you have data showing consumer preference between third party production versus company generated video content?
A: Yes. Stacks and Stacks found that Invodo-produced, retailer-branded video content drove higher conversion than manufacturer-supplied content. We also see that in data from Video Ratings and Comments, where consumers rate Invodo-produced, company-branded video as more helpful than video produced by other sources. And, as we discussed on the Webinar, companies that have traditionally used highly informal videos are recognizing the benefits of emphasizing good quality sound and lighting.
Q: What do you think about YouTube as a search engine as opposed to just a video hosting platform?
A: YouTube’s the second largest search engine – bigger than Yahoo! or Bing. It’s a great place to be found. Your video strategy should include leveraging your video assets across channels, including YouTube. I recommend using socially optimized edits for YouTube and Facebook. Reason: on a product page, your goal is to drive conversion – to get the consumer to click the “add to cart” button. But in social distribution, your goal is to bring that consumer to your site. That may require a shorter edit and an explicit call to action, such as “learn more at www.invodo.com.“
Q: What’s a good source of video statistics and information?
A: As Lauren said on the Webinar, she searched quite a bit and didn’t find anything close to a definitive resource. We publish a lot of information here on the Invodo blog and in our newsletter (kindly subscribe, if you haven’t, and thank you!). I frequently see journalists and bloggers linking to our video statistics page. We keep it updated with both Invodo and third-party information.
Did I miss a question? If so, email me at russ
invodo
com
and I’ll be happy to respond.
“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
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.
The video-enabled consumer has spoken. Find out what they said!
Over 1,000 shoppers were surveyed to find out how they use video in shopping and what elements matter to them. We invite you to join the e-tailing group President, Lauren Freedman, and Invodo Director of Marketing, Russ Somers, who will share these research insights and the implications for online and multichannel merchants. Register today>>
Learn:
- Where, why, and how consumers watch video
- Where video performs best
- What consumers will watch – and what they won’t
- How consumers use video to make purchase decisions
Consumers expect video to be a part of their shopping experience. But how do you know what type of video will engage and convert them? Find out why video quality matters, what today’s consumer will watch, how to extend your video investment across channels to leverage the power of social networks and mobile devices, and more.
Leave with insight into consumer behavior and best practices to engage and inspire your shoppers.
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.
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.
In Part 1 of this video strategy series, I discussed how to get started on narrowing down your choices for types and placements of videos. Remember, when you’re doing a test or pilot program with a finite number of videos, the first tip is to choose one product category. Focusing on a single category increases the likelihood that that site visitors will have the opportunity to view a video, yielding better and broader data for future decision making. In Part 2, I’ll offer some specific advice around choosing the products to shoot videos for.
1) Product complexity
If a product is complex and has many functions and features for the buyer to consider, it is ideal for video. Invodo conducted a test program with a leading office supply retailer. In the test, videos were produced for complex products such as office furniture and technology as well as for common office supplies such as sticky notes and file folders. The test revealed that online shoppers viewed the videos for the complex products at a significantly higher rate. Conversions followed views with those products seeing a higher lift in conversion percentage. Logic would dictate that if the product is familiar and easy to buy, it probably doesn’t need a video.
Another customer, BizChair.com, wanted to give their online shoppers an experience that is as close to a physical interaction with their products as possible. The result? Customers who view video have average cart values that are more than $50 higher than shoppers who don’t watch video.
2) Popularity
One of the keys to getting impact out of your video investment is to increase the likelihood that the videos will be viewed. Internet Retailer reported that online shoppers who viewed videos were 85% more likely to buy. It stands to reason that you would want to do everything you could to get videos in front of your shoppers. One way to do that is to place videos on pages that already get high traffic – your most popular, high-volume sellers.
Also, consider which products will be heavily promoted through marketing and advertising campaigns. An ad, email campaign or home page rotator can drive interest and increased traffic to specific pages. Make it pay off by adding video to those pages.
3) Price and Profit margin
As product price increases, the amount of research done by the consumer also increases. Here you can offer a helping hand early in the research process by providing rich content that educates and engages.
To maximize the ROI of your video plan, include videos for high-margin products. Since video has been shown to increase conversion rates, start with products that already yield the most revenue.
4) Placement
Consider how shoppers will interact with your website and sprinkle videos throughout their natural visit pattern. For instance, many customers will shop an item using the site search feature on your website. Typically this will launch a category page relative to the search term.
Most of the time, these pages consist of thumbnail images with a product name and price. It can be very difficult for shoppers to compare one product to another with such limited information. Enhance shopping at this level by including a visible play call to action on products that have video. Clicking the play button can launch a player overlayed on the category page that will run the video and return to the category page when it is finished. Using this feature, shoppers can comparison shop several products at the category level without ever having to navigate to the product pages. It’s a great way to increase views and to provide your customers with powerful, decision influencing content early in the consideration phase.
Other areas to consider for video placement are landing and promotional pages which will benefit from increased traffic due to advertising. Finally, don’t forget the homepage. Video included in an image rotator for highlighted products will drive increased clicks and set the tone for the shopper that this is a site where video is an important part of the content strategy. The Home Depot is using this strategy on their homepage for products they are featuring during Black Friday. They employed a similar strategy last year and set company records for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Following these tips for product selection can help maximize what you learn and the results you derive from an initial video test program. They also work as you begin to scale the program across your entire website. For more strategy tips, sign up for our monthly eNewsletter. Each edition features video news, industry trends and tips to keep you in the know on everything eCommerce video.
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