Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

I came across a great expression this week, in a Business Week article – “haptic gratification”.

I must confess that in my ignorance I was unaware of the term “haptic”, which according to my dictionary means “of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.”

Haptic Gratification - relates to the sense of touch (image by mind on fire)

Haptic gratification as part of the shopping experience

The haptic gratification in shopping therefore is the ability for people to handle a product, in order to get a full sense of it and make a purchasing decision.
As all of us involved in the world of ecommerce know, one of the biggest barriers to online shopping is just that – that humans prefer to touch and feel a product before buying – something they obviously can’t do online.
It’s not just the sensory feeling they’re looking for in handling a product. The physical touching of a product allows shoppers to get a better sense of size, shape, weight, color and more.
Or as Sheldon Gilbert of Proclivity Systems says in the article:

“We’re emotive, sensory creatures, so we need to touch and feel to be comfortable with our consumer decision.“

Bridging the Haptic Gap

While, the internet and thereby online shopping by nature are not compatible with the haptic experience, what online retailers can do, is help ease the buying decision by bringing consumers as close of a hands-on experience as the medium allows.

Product videos are of course a great tool to that end, especially when executed well. All online stores offer static images of products, but these are not enough for the sensory shopper who wants to get more of a feel for the item. Product videos on the other hand offer a near sensory experience, allowing shoppers to see individual products from multiple angles in various uses, with a full narration of attributes.

Google only shows four results for the search term “haptic gratification”, but I think as ecommerce grows and we evolve the language around it to describe the type of shopping experiences we’re looking to create, it’s going to be a big one. At least it puts into words exactly what it is we’re trying to do.

Image credit: mind on fire

Despite the fact this a “Company Blog” I usually try to keep our posts focused on tips, hints and news about ecommerce videos and related issues. Since launching the blog about a month ago we’ve listed tips for using video to increase holiday season sales, debated how to measure the ROI of Social Media, listed video slideshow tools anyone can use for free and covered a whole bunch of similar topics. What I’ve avoided doing is blowing our own horn – I prefer having others sing our praises, and over the past week it seems this is exactly what’s happening…

Not adding video to your site is like Burning Money | Image credit: purpleslog

Electronics retailer sees conversions leap with automated videos

A week ago InternetRetailing’s Sarah Clark posted a story about the experiences ElectricShopping has had with ourecommerce video solution. Sarah reports:

“Electric Shopping has added Treepodia’s automated product videos to its site and has seen a growth in conversions of an average of 75% among shoppers who watch the videos compared with those who don’t, with increases peaking at 200% for some products.”

Sarah’s interviewed Electric Shopping’s CEO Rob Levy about his team’s experiences with video prior to using our solution:

“Previously we had videos for a very small percentage of our product catalogue because we simply couldn’t produce them quickly enough. On top of that, we had no way to measure their performance so we had no idea what benefit, if any, they provided our business.”

Rob’s final quote in Sarah’s article is the type of feedback we enjoy hearing the most:

“Because of the A/B testing and performance metrics Treepodia supplies, we can now see how many times someone looks at a particular product page, whether they viewed the video, and whether they purchased — and we definitely see a higher conversion rate among those visitors who watch the videos“

Not a week went by since Sarah published her story and we received permission from another client to list their experiences in our latest press release:

Sales on BedBathStore.com rise 69% with automated product videos

Yesterday our PR Nancy Hill published a press release based on the permission we got from Mike Reichman, COO of BedBathStore.com, to quote their case study as part of our publicity. In the release Reichman speaks of the impact our solution has had on BedBathStore’s sales:

“In just two months after we began using Treepodia’s automated online product video platform, our e-commerce sales of products that include video rose 69%. In addition, customer conversion was up as much as 300% among those who viewed the product videos.”

Reichman goes on to explain that his team elected to use our solution because:

“It was the only alternative we found that could cover hundreds of items quickly and with relatively low cost, and that also provided ongoing measurement and optimization”

Afterword

I don’t use this blog to tell you how wonderful we are because with posts like the ones I quoted above readily available online, I don’t really need to.

The question you need to ask yourself right about now is why you haven’t added videos to your product listings yet, and whether you can really afford to leave the revenue these will provide you unclaimed. Our pay-per-view ecommerce video solution can be up and running on your site by this time tomorrow.

What are you waiting for?

Contact us for details now…

Afterword

A few days after posting this I was notified that Shaun Ryan of SLI Systems did an interview with Treepodia client Lee Brown of Online Golf. During the interview Lee shares that people who view a video on their site are 85% more likely to buy than people who don’t. In Shaun’s words:

This is one of the strongest endorsements for online video I’ve ever seen

The original post on the SLI Systems blog is here: http://www.sli-systems.com/blog/2009/10/viewing-videos-increases-sales.html

Online purchases up 2.2% in Q2

Even in this down economy ecommerce as a whole has continued to rise over the past year. Online retail behemoth Amazon reported revenue of $15 billion, up from $12.5 billion for the same period a year ago according to the Knowledge@Wharton article “Fit for the Holidays: Amazon is Shaping Up and Shipping Out.”:

“Even though the U.S. Census Bureau notes ecommerce accounts for only 3.6% of total retail sales in the country — up from 1% in 2001 — online purchases grew 2.2% in the second quarter of this year, while total retail sales fell 0.4%.

“What’s startling is not the magnitude of ecommerce sales relative to overall retail sales, but the growth rate,” says Marshall Fisher, professor of operations and information management at Wharton.”

Frankly I’m amazed online purchases still only account for just 3.6% of all retail sales. On the other hand that’s great news because as an industry it means we have a lot of growing to do…

Santa driving Vespa's sales

Ecommerce sites expected to reach $45 Billion online this holiday season

According to Forrester Research, this holiday season American online retail sales are expected to reach $45 billion – an 8% increase from last year.

“Much of the growth can be attributed to improvements in the online shopping experience in recent years. In fact, ecommerce has come of age to such an extent that the lines between online and offline shopping are blurring.”

Why product videos are helping increase online revenues

Product videos are considered an important contributor to this growth and to the blurring of the distinction between online and offline shopping. Retailers are using video to enhance online shopping experiences by adding new engagement dimensions that help shoppers get a more tangible feeling for the products their looking for, which increases their sense of security and comfort about the item, moving them to make purchases more often.

By virtue of being mixed media videos simulataneously address the needs of different types of consumers:

• Voice-over narration attracts auditory learners, who absorb information best when hearing it.
• Visual cues such as bullet point slides work well with visual learners, who absorb information best when seeing and reading it.

Over the past two years we’ve seen all our clients, regardless of industry, consistently increase their ecommerce conversion rates significantly by adding video presentations to their product pages.

How to get the most out of your ecommerce videos this holiday season:

What follows are a few ideas we thought about over here at Treepodia that’ll help you increase your conversion rates and drive more sales this holiday season. Please feel free to add you own ideas, tips and pointers in the comment section of the article.

1. Focus – Use video to promote your holiday season’s top sellers

Limiting your focus to the seasons biggest sellers will ensure you make the most out of your video investment in the time frame available. You can add videos for other products when the holiday hubbub is over.

2. Fun – Dress your videos up for the holidays

You can create a more engaging, fun and seasonal shopping experience for your customers by giving your videos that special holiday flair:

• Adding the sound of jingling bells
• Showing a wreath-like trim around the edges
• Having a little elf present your product’s benefits.

3. Promote your promotion

Make sure you use all video’s interaction dimensions to convey your message. State your item’s promotion in the video’s narration and sign off with a slide about it at the end.

4. Happy Holidays Everyone!

Everybody likes receiving seasonal greetings. Take the opportunity, like me, to thank your visitors and add a personal holiday greeting message to your video : )