Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

Over the past few months, and with the support of some of our best clients, we’ve been working on a case study that investigates how video is impacting online sales of jewelry items. I hope you find the following information useful and welcome comments and queries…

Mike@treepodia.com : )

Being a market leader is a big responsibility. Simply put – When you’re a leader you have no one to follow. Educating and developing your niche is primarily up to you!

As the market leader of video-for-ecommerce we take our role very seriously. In fact you’ll very rarely see cat jokes on this blog at all! (well there was that one time…)

The fun part is that you have a broader view of your niche than anyone else…

Here at Treepodia we love sharing our unique viewpoint in order to help with the “educating-and-development-responsibility” bit. This here post is one such example…

Ecommerce, Video and Jewelry sales

History

Treepodia has always been lucky enough to have a special relationship with the online-jewelry-sales industry. Very early on in our operations we caught the attention of Mr. Shmuel Gniwisch, CEO of Ice.com – one of the first companies to turn a jewelry store into an online shopping experience (…way back in 1999!!!).

With the support of Mr. Gniwisch, Ice, and it’s credo on such platforms as Internet Retailer, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times (…etc.) we were immediately shot into the spotlight for anyone, and everyone, in the online-jewelry-sales business.

It was an amazing opportunity – Jewelry vendors deal in relatively high-ticket items, and anything that makes their products stand out can help them increase sales. Video was the perfect fit…

We became a big hit with online Jewelry vendors everywhere, and companies in this niche still remain some our best clients.

Why this matters?

Our platform enables our customers to:

• Trace a conversion back to a video
• Enable A/B testing for each product to test the impact video is having on its Conversion Rate

Having many clients in the the jewelry industry means we process millions of jewelry-article video views, and can aggregate the above mentioned data for them into unique insights regarding video’s impact:

8% of Jewelry site visitors choose to view videos

As the following chart demonstrates nearly 8% of all the visitors to jewelry websites elect to view a video when included on the page, indicating a good level of adoption and engagement for the technology.

Product videos boost jewlery site conversions by 247%

Videos’ contribution to an increase in conversions is evident across the board for all categories of jewelry items, however to truly perceive just how dramatic this increase is, I’d like to offer this next chart, which demonstrates the relative increase in conversions video enhanced pages had in comparison with their non-video displaying versions:

Note the first column of the table is the baseline “100%” which indicates no change. The chart immediately makes it evident that even the smaller conversion increases represent a near DOUBLING of sales. For bracelets and pendants the situation is even more dramatic with sales increasing by 2.5-3.7 times what they were for the same products without videos.

On average across all items and all vendors the study proves videos boosted conversions by 247%. Adding product videos to jewelry websites has been found to more-than-double sales!

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Raw Data:

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Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peng-hui/3120170669

Introduction

With a huge inventory of over 135,000 individual products, ranging from decorative items to clothing to personal care products, greeting cards and more, DollarDays is the leading online wholesaler helping smaller businesses compete against larger chain stores.

By offering a wide range of high-quality bulk products which can be ordered in small quantities (single-case minimum) at competitive prices, DollarDays enables smaller merchants to in turn offer competitive pricing to their customers without the need to invest in excessive inventory.

Marc Joseph and Kevin Ryan - Dollardays.com

The Need – User Experience and Exposure

With a huge offering of a wide range of products DollarDays’ need was two-fold.

1. First, as an evolved online retailer, the company understood the advantage of having videos for popular products. As Marc Joseph, President of DollarDays said, “With so many products to cover, and an ever-expanding product line, an automated solution was clearly the only option in terms of both sheer logistics and cost.”
2. Second, the company needed to make sure its many products were found. As DollarDays has an eclectic product offering, long-tail search terms are particularly effective in terms of video SEO. Therefore, the added value of properly indexing each product video for Google’s search algorithms and the associated video SEO were of particular concern for DollarDays.

The Solution - Treepodia’s Ecommerce Video Platform and Dynamic Video Sitemap

DollarDays originally opted for the Treepodia Enterprise package to create some 5,000 product videos as well as a Dynamic Video Sitemap to ensure these videos were being fully indexed by Google.

Once the success of this endeavor was realized, DollarDays upped their purchase to the Premium package for full coverage of their entire product line.

The Results – 74% Sales Increase

The addition of product videos had a huge and immediate effect, the most dramatic of which was a 74% increase in sales.

In terms of video SEO the positive effects were also quickly felt as all products were fully indexed by Google within a single day.

Most importantly, product specific long-tail search terms such as “bright pencil pouch” were yielding far higher results on Google, in many cases moving to first place.

Marc Joseph*, founder and president of Dollardays.com, is so pleased he gave us a quote for this case study:

“We’ve been incredibly pleased with the results we’ve received from the Treepodia solutions so much so, in fact, that within a month we’d already decided to expand the Treepodia solutions across our entire product offering. Not only was the ROI quick and concrete, but the implementation was surprisingly simple.”

Need to Download?

Download the case study here:
Dollar Days Boosts Video SEO Case Study

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Marc Joseph – Founder and CEO of Dollardays.com

• With more than 30 years in the retail and wholesale industry, Marc Joseph is the founder of DollarDays International. Joseph’s has helped to build some of America’s most known retail stores including Federated Department Stores, Crown Books, and Bills, a chain of variety stores headquartered in Jackson, Miss. He also helped ignite the dollar store trend as the General Merchandise Manager in Everything’s A Dollar stores chain. Joseph also started another innovative chain for EAD, The $5 & $10 Stores, locating the chain’s stores next to Everything’s A Dollar Stores to ensure traffic and offer price-conscious customers additional retail options. Most recently Joseph started a chain of hair salons in Arizona and built it up to 11 stores before selling them to devote full time to DollarDays.
  Mr. Joseph earned his Bachelor of Administration in Marketing with a Finance Minor from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He lives in Phoenix with his wife and four children.

Are you ready to make Ecommerce Video your Conversion boost "Hole-in-One"?

Ecommerce is an industry dominated by numbers, and what speaks better to professionals accustomed to looking at numbers than a solid body of statistical evidence…

Ecommerce Video Conversion Rate increase stats across industries

After doing some number crunching on data we collected last quarter it good to have the proof to back out intuition that video works well for vendors who have deployed it on their product pages. Interestingly Video is one of the few strategies that seems to work well regardless of the vertical in which it is deployed.

We’ve seen dramatic increases in conversion rates throughout Q4 of 2010 in popular ecommerce categories as dissimilar as jewelry and sports!

The following chart gives an overview for the conversion rate increases witnessed for shoppers who watched video for some of our most popular verticals:

Ecommerce Video Conversion Rate increases across verticals

Here they are ranked by the order of increase in conversion rates seen:

• Gifts +113%
• Electronics +101%
• Jewelry +85%
• Home & Garden +43%
• Personal Care +14%

The numbers are based on an aggregation of data pulled from online retail sites using the Treepodia ecommerce video platform and the automated videos created by that very system.

With consistent increases in CVR being recorded each quarter, year in and year out, it’s safe to say the increase brought about by online videos is more than a trend. It’s the new reality of online marketing. In other words, Q4’s positive results prove once again that the addition of videos to ecommerce sites is one of the most effective sales tools online retailers can employ.

As one satisfied customer from the sporting goods industry – Lee Brown, Founder and Managing Director of Onlinegolf – had to say:

“…Our customers want to get a feel for what it is they’re buying. That’s where video comes into play. With Treepodia’s video solution we’ve seen an increase in CVR of up to 88% for items featuring video…”

If you want too want to dramatically increase the conversion rates for your ecommerce site sign up for one of our packages and have your entire product catalog covered with high converting ecommerce videos within less than 24 hours.

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Image Credit: Fevisyu

Everybody knows video is on the rise - but how much?...

A recent study published by Tubemogul, a video distribution and analytics startup, in partnership with Brightcove, a video platform, provides some interesting insights and statistics regarding the ways and places we’re all finding, viewing and sharing video content.

Before diving into some of the cool numbers shared in the study It’s important to note that the study is based on numbers garnered from both companies’ data, which means that it only represents a certain segment of video consumption. This isn’t to say that the data isn’t valid – only that it’s partial and should be viewed as such. For example, data regarding Youtube, which alone accounts for ~40% of the market, is not covered by the study.

Video Engagement Statistics

• Broadcast networks take the lead in terms of viewing time per stream
  Online video content from broadcast networks is watched on average 2:53 minutes per stream. The networks are followed by music labels (1:50 min.) and newspaper publishers (1:41 min.)

• Newspapers and magazines lead in terms of video viewing completion rates
  Interestingly viewers are most likely to watch an entire video when they are consuming it on a newspaper’s site. Newspapers and magazine publishers video viewing completion rates are about 40% each closely followed by broadcasters (38%) with music labels bringing up the rear with 29%.

• Twitter leads in terms of referral engagement
  Twitter referrals generate the highest level of engagement, when compared to other referral sources, for broadcast networks, music labels and magazine publishers. Interestingly newspaper publishers enjoy their highest engagement rates with viewers referred from Yahoo.

Facebook’s shameful share

Another interesting statistic published in the study is Facebook’s share in driving online traffic. Although Facebook’s community has increased by 2% in April alone, and despite the fact that over 34% of the entire adult demographic in the US is already using Facebook, accounts for only 0.40% of video traffic.

I think that if nothing else this number, if correct, speaks volumes for the relatively poor experiences Facebook delivers in terms of video viewing and upload. Considering how popular video is, and considering Facebook’s incredible adoption levels, Zuckerberg’s social behemoth – a leader in almost every other online field, should account for more than %0.40 without even trying!

I’m pretty certain that when Facebook chooses to address it’s video usability issues its market share will improve dramatically almost immediately.

Join the video bandwagon with Treepodia Video Distributor

All these numbers are good and well but how does this reflect on your business and your day to day marketing efforts? Well, although I’m hardly what you’d call objective, I believe the joint Brightcove Tubemogul study provides further validation for our Video Distributor product, which syndicates etailers’ product videos to video sharing sites (Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, etc.). Since we released Video Distributor in February we’ve consistently seen consumers searching for, and learning about our clients’ products on the video sites, and then coming in to make their purchases on our clients’ sites. This trend was confirmed by all the pilot partners who helped us test Video Distirbutor before we made it publicly available.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ndevil/3491395689

The silver lining of our recent bad weather? Great online sales!

The numbers are officially in. According to marketing research giant comScore the 2009 Christmas season 2009 (i.e. November and December) was, despite the economy, a success for online retailers in the US.

The $29.1 billion generated in sales marks a 4% growth from the previous year, exceeded analysts expectations, and helped salvage what was otherwise a sluggish year for retail.

$913,000,000 In 1 Day

To further increase optimism (and we do like to bring you encouraging news), the period also contains the single largest online spending day recorded in history. On Tuesday, the 15th of December, an astounding $913 million was spent shopping online.

What were we all buying?

Unsurprisingly perhaps, classic gift items did very well during the period.

The products that saw the highest increases in sales were consumer electronics, watches and jewelry, which turned out to be the single highest performing category.

Event tickets, computer hardware and books also made a strong showing.

Let’s talk about the weather…

So what made the difference?

According to comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni, it’s a combination of factors including,

“[A] strong late season spending surge, propelled by effective retailer promotions, guaranteed shipping and a major snowstorm on the eastern seaboard that convinced many to shop from the comfort of home”.

That’s right, every cloud has a silver lining and for online retail the devastatingly bad winter weather has definitely paid off.

Getting lucky is fun but can’t be counted on

Of course we cannot control (or count on) external factors like the weather to drive business, nor would we wish continued bad weather on anyone. But it’s interesting to note the variety of factors that drive consumer behaviors – not all of which are in our own hands.

There are always surprising external events one can’t take into account when planning and making predictions (despite the popular expression “expect the unexpected”). What we can continue to do, is work with the more stable elements that have indeed proven successful and keep our business in a state of readiness for quick capitalization of arising opportunities.

What to do in 2010?

While unemployment remains high, and people are still watching their wallets, it’s more important than ever to deliver the best online shopping experience possible, with the highest value to consumers.

Interactivity, a feedback forum, great customer service… these are a few of the things today’s conscientious shoppers are expecting of us. Other than that, in 2010 you must continue to invest in bringing your customers the products they want, in a format that’s accessible to them and at the best prices possible. Remember that price comparison and your competition are always only a click away.

If you’re an online retailer looking to do something new this year, we suggest adding product videos – it may be our business, but video is also the hottest thing going on online these days…

Image credit: vinayshivakumar

While the main gist of my writings here have to do with the world of video and eCommerce, I think that the overall world of online video, and how people are using and relating to video as a medium, is very relevant too.

That’s one of the reasons I enjoyed the Marketing Sherpa blog post “Blogger Video Sharing Data.” It delineates, in detail, how, when, and where bloggers are using video in their posts.

Marketing requires analytics as much as content

What I like most about the article, however, is the attention given to measurable metrics.After all the need for good statistics in any marketing effort, i.e. how are viewers interacting with the content, is probably as important as the absolute need for good content itself.

One of the biggest benefits of advertising (or doing anything) online is the ability to generate statistics. How many people actually saw the page on which your video appeared? How many clicked on it? Where do they live?

Detail from the Youtube Insight panel - more on the video at the bottom of this post

The level of detail that we have access to these days is unbelievable. All one need do is look at one’s Youtube Insight panel to obtain demographic data that would have been completely impossible to collect even 3 years ago. According to the Marketing Sherpa post this was exactly what was done in order to generate the report discussed, but on a very grand scale:

“Sysomos analyzed over 100 million blog posts from July to September 2009 to measure bloggers’ video sharing. The report breaks down the bloggers’s demographics and the services they use.”

What the data reveals about video sharing

The information delivered includes amazing facts such as that in the US, “81.6% of bloggers use YouTube to embed or link to video.” Well, that maybe we could have guestimated, but there’s no way we could have guessed New York is the top city for video sharing via blog, followed by Los Angeles and Chicago.

Interestingly, when ranked by state, California ends up as the most video-sharing-via-blog state, followed by New York, Texas and Pennsylvania.

How old are video blog sharers?

The age breakdown wasn’t very surprising to me – turns out that almost 63% of those sharing videos on their blogs are young adults between the ages of 20 and 35, followed by a very distant 25.9% for those 35 to 60.

Back to the basics

But beyond these trivia details my greater point is that online EVERYTHING is measurable. This is perhaps the most amazing promise online marketing delivers on: no more stumbling in the dark, no more “Maybes”, “Perhaps”es or “Possibly”s – just simple measurable and actionable figures that anyone can obtain and use.

This is more than just interesting, it’s the kind of stuff advertisers must know to remain effective and reach their target audience as it migrates online in ever greater droves.

PS

Never checked out Youtube’s Insight?
Why not get the lowdown by watching this 2.5 minute video from Before and After TV: