I recently spent a day in Invodo's eCommerce video production facility in Dallas, Texas. The flexible space allows us to run many studios in parallel. Combined with our proprietary processes, that enables production at an unprecedented scale. Editing begins in real-time to allow faster delivery. The warehouse space and logistics expertise allow us to handle any kind of product at whatever volume's required.
But why am I writing about it when video communicates so much more effectively? See for yourself.
View content for Invodo Dallas Studio.
Working with a variety of online retailers and brands, Invodo shoots video for multiple types of products across various product categories. When first planning a video strategy for our clients, one of the immediate questions asked is, “Which products in our catalog should we shoot video for first?”
For retailers who sell tens of thousands of products across multiple product categories, it is impossible, and ill advised to suggest they cover their entire product catalog at once or just shoot video one product category at a time. There are certain types of products that benefit more from having eCommerce video and identifying those products is one of the most important, and strategic decisions to make.
To make the most of your eCommerce video investment, start by shooting video for the products that fall into one or more of the categories below.
1. 80/20
Shoot video for the products that account for a high percentage of your sales. If 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your products, create video for as many products in that 20 percent as you can. If that number seems daunting, start with the top 5 percent and work your way down.
2. High Traffic
Products with high traffic mean more opportunity for you to convert those browsers into buyers. If your high traffic products are not converting at a high rate, definitely consider shooting eCommerce video for those products. Video increases conversion by an average of 30% so take advantage of the power of video and cover your high traffic products.
3. Complex Features
Products with complex features, such as portable air conditioners, greatly benefit from eCommerce video. Consumers are often hesitant to buy complex products online because of the inability to see and test all the different components. With eCommerce video, you are able prove a product’s value by demonstrating important features and highlighting unique product benefits. eCommerce video improves consumer confidence, increasing the chances they will buy.
4. High Margin
The more high margin products you sell the more profit you will make. Internet Retailer reports that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not so use video to drive traffic, increase conversion, and reduce returns for your high margin items. You are sure to see a great return in your video investment.
Video is powerful. From feature films to viral YouTube clips, video engages viewers, elicits emotion, and often cause powerful reactions.
Good video creators have a purpose in mind when producing their content. Whether it’s to make someone laugh, highlight social issues, or promote products, video should have a purpose. At Invodo, our purpose is simple; we create video to help retailers sell more online.
Recently, Magellan’s International Travel, #420 on the IR 500, implemented Invodo eCommerce video specifically created for their top products. Not only did Magellan’s do a stellar job implementing video onto their product pages, but they also created a video gallery containing 54 product videos providing their customers a unique, one of a kind shopping experience.
So why did Magellan’s decide to go beyond the product page with their videos? Well, there are many motives but I have highlighted the top 4 reasons why you should take a tip from Magellan’s and consider implementing a video gallery on your eCommerce site.
1. Enhance Customer Experience
Video elevates the online shopping experience. These days, consumers expect robust product information when shopping online. From product reviews, to multiple product images, the more valuable information you provide consumers the more likely they are to buy. And there is no form of rich media more effective at communicating a products’ features, benefits, and value than video.
By implementing a video gallery, Magellan’s now allows customers to navigate videos by category, see a brief product description, and head straight to the product description page where they can add the item to their cart. Shopping via video = Awesome.
2. Boost SEO
Since December 2007, Google has been accepting video sitemaps in order to index relevant video content and give SEO credit where credit is due. As video continues to dominate the internet, so does the need for proper indexing.
Recently, Google has added the ability to specify both a gallery URL and unique URL in the video sitemap for each video. For Magellan’s, this means they can have their unique video content associated with two URLs increasing their chances of being found, aka, a boost in their SEO.
Note: Google allows only one video gallery association per video.
3. Increase Conversion
Video Sells. At Invodo, we see an average 30% increase in conversion rates for products with eCommerce video. However, there are often times when videos are hidden deep within a retailer’s site. No fault of the retailers as many product specific pages live under home, category, and multiple other pages.
As Magellan’s has demonstrated, a video gallery solves that problem. They have a large video CTA on their homepage that directs you straight to the video gallery where you can browse their videos. Can’t get more exposure than that!
By putting your best sales person demonstrating your top products in multiple locations on your site, you increase the chances customers will find the video, watch it, and buy the product! From a browser to a buyer, just like that.
4. Maximize Video Impact
Video can be a substantial investment. It takes creating the actual video content, optimizing your content, integrating it into your site, generating video sitemaps, and distributing to social networks if desired. So why not maximize your investment and put your videos in front of your customers at multiple points of purchase consideration! By having videos in an easy to navigate, well-organized, relevant video gallery AND on specific product pages, you will realize a higher video impact.
Kudos to Magellan’s who is clearly taking advantage of the benefits of eCommerce video. I hope online retailers continue to create and implement product videos on their site. It is truly changing the way people shop online.
We all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch. So retailers who are new to video often wisely ask “what would it really cost me to do this myself?” Do a cost analysis on the following elements if you’re considering doing video in-house. For some retailers it works. But it’s certainly not free. Retailers who do the math, like Pure Pearls, often find that a do-it-yourself approach is both expensive and inefficient.
Production Labor. Prior to Invodo I worked at a software company that used video as a key marketing component. We shot videos of our VP of Technology explaining new products, tools and features as well as video interviews with customers at tradeshows. That company had around 25 products and 10 product launches per year – not a lot compared to a retailer. But planning, shooting, editing and managing the content took 50% or more of one experienced marketer’s time. The scalability was fine for the limited number of products the software firm sold but wouldn’t have covered a fraction of a retailer’s catalog. And that staff becomes a fixed cost regardless of whether there are videos to shoot on any given day or not.
Tools and Equipment. Labor was the biggest input but camera, sound equipment, editing software, and lights soon found their way into the software company’s budget. There are ways to do good quality video without spending tens of thousands of dollars on equipment. In fact, our friends at ReelSocialMedia have put together a great getting started guide. I wish we’d had their information available at the software company as it would have saved us about eight thousand dollars. However, it still wouldn’t have yielded professionally produced video, nor would it help with the scalability issue. For a retailer with any number of products, that’s a problem.
Video Platform. At the software company we used YouTube and Vimeo. We weren’t in the hyper-competitive retail environment where SEO is king and a competitor is always a click away. So we didn’t mind the inevitability that some users would click twice on the embedded video and end up surfing YouTube instead of buying from our site. I haven’t seen YouTube disclose the percentage of users who “click twice and pay the price” but we know that getting, and keeping, viewers on YouTube is central to their revenue model. That traffic is a real cost, along with the forgone SEO boost. Then there’s the issue of placing YouTube’s brand on your site, a far bigger concern for a brand-conscious retailer than it was for the software company. Of course you can avoid those issues by paying for a video platform…which takes you even farther from “free” without doing anything to solve your content and distribution problems.
Video Distribution. Did I mention what the software company’s video marketer was doing when he wasn’t scripting, producing, or editing content? He was manually uploading it to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Blinkx, and anywhere else video could be uploaded. Again, the labor was a real cost and it was tempting to skip that labor-intensive step. Given that Verizon Wireless credits the quarter million views a new product video received in a two-week period with driving a record number of pre-orders, there’s something to be said for doing it and doing it right if you’re a retailer.
Opportunity Cost. This is the big one. At Invodo we’ve made tens of thousands of eCommerce videos, far more than anyone else. We’ve learned a lot from measuring results with customers in different verticals. In short, we’re well up the learning curve in terms of understanding how to optimize for conversion. Video merchandising is an under-appreciate driver of conversion impact, for example. Can you afford to go out with something that might leave money on the table? Can you afford to have a tenth of the video product coverage your competitors can achieve by outsourcing to experts?
These are all real costs of doing retail video. All of those costs can be managed down by making compromises, but cost shouldn’t be the main concern. The cheapest options in life are sometimes the costliest in the long term. What ROI do you demand from your video program? What’s the best way to realize that ROI? Start with that question. Are you doing video in-house? How scalable is it, and what challenges have you found? Let me know in the comments.
Do you want to sell more online?
Do you want to increase traffic to your site?
Do you want to reduce returns?
Do you want to elevate your conversion strategy?
If you said no to any of the above questions…..I would just go back to watching videos on YouTube.
If Yes, stop by booth #815 at IRCE 2010 to learn how to do all of the above and more through the power of Invodo eCommerce Video. As your complete eCommerce video solution, Invodo has every component online retailers and brands need to sell more online. From our scalable video production services to our eCommerce focused platform and player to our social distribution network, Invodo distributes conversion-driven video to consumers at all points of purchase and consideration.
Stop by and start up a conversation and take a shot with Justin Crandall, Jeff Roussell, Kayln Blacklock, or myself, Melissa Reiss. By the way, you have to stop by to see what we are shooting…. it’ll be a kick.
Look forward to seeing you there!
Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition
June 8-11, 2010
McCormick Place West
Chicago, IL
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:
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.
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