Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

If you’ve been following the buzz in Online Marketing circles these past two weeks you’ll have noticed the big story on everybody’s mind is Google’s gradually increasing reliance and integration of social data into search results. In case you’re wondering what that means in plain English -

Google is now customizing our search results based on data it’s pulling from our personal social circle, and other personal indicators it has about us

Variations in search are nothing but new – we’re probably well aware of the variance in results for queries between google.com and any of Google’s nationally localized sites (i.e. google.co.uk, google.de, etc.), but this new step is something beyond that. Google is now serving each of us with a unique set of results based on what it knows about us PERSONALLY.

A really simple example of how this influences results is below. The screenshot on the left is Google’s search results for my surname, from a browser session where I was signed in. You’ll note my own LinkedIn profile ranks in at #6. On the right hand side I conducted the same search without being signed in. My LinkedIn profile is absent from the results:

Personalized Google search

So What?

Many of the pundits writing about this recent change are taking offence at what they view as a serious offence against their privacy. While I feel it’s not my place to weigh in on the moral aspects of this change, I will say I believe Google doesn’t really have a choice, if it wants to retain it’s position as the leader in RELEVANT search results. There are two main reasons why I think this must be the wave of the future:

#1 – Is that really number 1?

As the web continues to grow exponentially, presenting sites in a simple ranked list format is becoming increasingly irrelevant. It’s a simplistic form of rating that doesn’t really match the complexities of the paradigm.

An easy example is a search for “technology news”. When I ran this search Cnet news came out ranking in at number #1 (from a non-personalized session).

Really?

Is Cnet the “best” site for that query?

Aren’t Techcrunch, engadget, Mashable, CNN’s technology section, etc. etc. etc…. just as deserving?

#2 – Personal IS Relevant

Consider the following situation – Your anniversary is coming up and you’d like to surprise your spouse with a cool date at an Indian restaurant. You have two choices for selecting a restaurant to go to:

• Option #1 – Search your local food directory for a restaurant that might be a good fit
• Option #2 – Ask a foodie friend for a recommendation

Obviously option #2 will yield better fitting results for your date - because your friend knows you. They’ll naturally rule out all the options that you’re less likely to enjoy, leaving you with a selection that matches your choice in decor, budget, location, etc.

This is precisely what Google is tapping into now.

The reality is that the answer to the question “Which is the best Indian restaurant in town“, is entirely subjective, and probably even changes depending on the type of evening you have planned out (going out with a bunch of mates to eat Indian you might choose a different spot than where you’d go for a romantic dinner for two…)

What this means for ecommerce and why product videos matter even more

Online vendors are going to have get used to a web where the old and tried SEO techniques that worked to push them up the SERPs will gradually be replaced (Google’s detractors say “supplanted”).

Increasingly we’ll be all viewing customized and personalized results where for every query the top results will be determined by whatever related content our friends have been sharing, reviewing, commenting and buzzing about. It’s here I believe vendors with video integrated into their sites will truly enjoy an advantage for the simple reason that video content is far more likely to create that type of engagement than boring old text-and-images.

But I’m willing to put this to the test:

For the vast majority of products successful online sales are heavily correlated to the quality of the images and video on the site.

It follows that successful and efficient management of your website’s product images can be a major contributor to your site’s success. As we’ve listed here before, it’s definitely a critical factor in determining the quality of your product videos.

It used to be Image Management was exculsively the realm of photographers and graphic designers, however with more tools being made available for free and online use, this is no longer the case.

Today any ecommerce professional so desiring can efficiently, manage, edit and work collaboratively, with his or her website’s product images, using only free tools, and more specifically Google’s Picasa and Picasa Web Albums service.

The underlying logic for selecting Picasa is this:

It’s Free, excellent, and hooks up to a reliable backup…

Picasa is "built-in backup"

Managing and arranging images

Picasa Web tools is a full featured photo management solution backed by a powerful and FREE software suite, both owned and maintained by Google.

There are a bunch of things you can do with your photos using only Picasa’s web interface:

• Organize and label photos and albums
• Set sharing rules and notifications
• Provide geo-location for images
• Edit images
• Collaborate with others

Picasa is great for product image gallery management

Collaborative work

Picasa’s full integration with all of Google’s other products, and the availability of Commenting for the images on the web, makes collaboration easy and intuitive:

Editing images

There are many types of tasks you might want to accomplish with your images, but it’s safe to bet Resizing and Cropping are going to be at the top of the list…

Resize/crop:

Identifying site image size
Start by identifying what size you need to crop/resize your photos to.

If you’re not sure go to any product page, right-click on the main product image, and save-as. Now check your downloaded image’s properties to identify it’s size. Alternatively if you’re browsing with Chrome you can simply right-click and select Inspect element to reveal the product image size via the Metrics tab:

Identifying image size with Chrome

Entering resize values
When resizing match your site’s smallest value (width or height) to that of the edited image:

Resizing product images with Picasa

Cropping
Set your crop area by dragging or setting constraints for shape and size:

Cropping images with Picnic

Whatever edit’s you make don’t forget to Apply and Save your work before closing down Picnic

Uploading to your site

An important tip to remember for keeping your photos in order, is to associate all the images for a particular product or category in a single folder. This works well when you want to batch download photos for work on your local machine:

The ability to download entire albums at a time is a HUGE time saver

…and just as well when you want  to upload/update the photos on your site (see below).

Naming and locating images 
For extra SEO value it’s well worth your while to give all your product images meaningful names (i.e. avoid file names like prod-123.jpg, instead go for descriptive names like professional-makeup-remover.jpg). Finding image folders to accomplish tasks like this is easy via Picasa’s desktop solution:

Locate your product album by right clicking the album name in your desktop version of Picasa, and selecting Locate on Disk

Tracking product photos is easy

Easy upload
Uploading and updating images to your website’s backend is now simply a matter of following these steps:

1. Access your product’s Image Management console via your shop’s backend (shown here: Magento – details on how to manage Magento product pages can be found here)
2. Browse to find the correct image folder
3. Select the images you want upload
4. Click Open
5. Click Upload and save your changes

Updating product photos is easy when they're kept in order

Cool Bonus!

It also enables you to take advantage of Picasa’s video creator to make videos for your products and upload them to Youtube:

Picasa enables you to make product videos for Youtube pubilcation

More on that here:

The start of a new year is always a good time to take stock of past accomplishments and plan for new ones. 2011 has been a great year for our clients and us, and we plan to work as hard as we can to ensure 2012 is even better. It’s to that purpose that we’re publishing the Treepodia Product Video Best Practice Guide, and making it accessible to the ecommerce community

Committed to Ecommerce Video

As I’ve mentioned here before, we feel very privileged and thankful for being the market leader of the Online Product Video sector. It’s a responsibility we don’t take lightly. We invest a fair amount of our time and resources in researching the technology side of things, and perhaps even more, the business impact and ROI product videos have for ecommerce vendors.

Helping Ecommerce Entrepreneurs Prosper in 2012

Over the years, and as a result of the massive amounts of data to which we’ve been given access by our clients, we’ve compiled a series of guidelines that have been proven time and again to increase conversions and sales. It’s our great pleasure to start this new year by sharing these guidelines, with the hope they help ecommerce  entrepreneurs everywhere increase their profitability and product video ROI this year.

So without further ado embedded below and available for download here is:

The Treepodia Product Video Best Practice Guide

————
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyz/3115855390/