Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

Earlier this week our ecommerce video platform went live on Israeli daily deals site “Cliqa“. In the press release our CEO, Tal Rubencyzk, gave the following statement

“Treepodia is glad to combine its technology for the first time within the daily deal industry. We are sure that the collaboration between Treepodia and Cliqa will give it’s users a joyful and unique experience.”

The excitement beyond the niceties

This is a very exciting move for us, and we hope to see more local daily deal sites following suite soon. I think we have a good reason to be optimistic that this is going to happen soon. Here’s why:

Why Video is a BIG DEAL for Daily Deal sites

Unlike Search or Social Networking where, for the meantime, a dominant player has cornered the market (Google and Facebook respectively), the Daily-Deal landscape is still much more fragmented and in many countries different players are still vying for a dominant position and seeking out to incorporate features that will give them a clear edge over their competitors. Or in the words of Oded Barel, owner of Cliqa:

“The whole area of daily deals and group buying, which has grown and developed drastically in Israel during the last year, is filled with rivalry between the different competitors in the market. The service offered by Cliqa together with Treepodia of video clips describing daily deals and transforming information to an interactive experience, is a unique service which does not exist in this area in Israel nor in the global market.”

Daily Deals your Bread and Butter?

We’re currently seeking more Daily Deal sites to partner with so if you’re involved in this competitive and exciting sector of the online economy please contact us to learn how our dynamic and automated video platform can help you rise above the competition too.

Today I’m happy to announce that starting with Prestashop’s v1.4 Treepodia’s ecommerce video addon is included in the Prestashop download package.

To celebrate our inclusion in the Prestashop package, and for a limited time only, we’re offering you a 30 day trial to use this addon for FREE. No commitments, no fees – simply install the video module, register with us, choose your video templates, and sit back and relax while your online shop catalog is automatically enriched with conversion promoting videos. The entire process takes literally minutes. Check out this short clip for more details and continue reading after the break:

• For more information reagrding the addon checkout the Prestashop website: http://www.prestashop.com/en/partner_treepodia
• The installation guide is here: http://www.prestashop.com/partner/installing_treepodia_prestashop_module.pdf

 

Welcome to the third installation of E-Commerce Videos in the Wild, dedicated to showcasing some of Treepodia’s client implementations. This month, a long list of clients have chosen Treepodia to power their online video content for their retail sites. We’d like to show you five of our newest clients here, and demonstrate how they’ve started implementing Treepodia’s videos.

LivEcoFriendly.com

This small business is dedicated to encouraging individuals to “go green”, and begin living more eco-friendly lives. LivEcoFriendly is an online retailer of eco-conscious products, selling everything from solar panels to bamboo chair mats.

LivEcoFriendly opted to embed our player in the product pages, thereby increasing its potential for conversions.

ReadyFlowers.com.au

ReadyFlowers.com.au is a leading flowers, hampers, and special gifts retailer in Southeast Asia.  With a list of satisfied customers numbering over 100,000, and over four years running, the site has truly become the go-to place for people looking to send a special message of love to someone they care about.

ReadyFlowers opted to implement Treepodia’s e-commerce videos in their product pages, using the overlay mode.

HammockCompany.com

Founded a decade ago in what is known as the hammock capital of the world, Greenville North Carolina, The Hammock Company has served over 100,000 customers. No doubt its strong focus on customer service has played a role in creating significant customer loyalty.

The Hammock Company chose to embed our player directly onto its product pages, creating a seamless video experience for its potential buyers.

ToadsAndTulips.com

Specializing in baby gear, nursery furniture, educational toys, and other fun kid stuff, ToadsAndTulips prides itself on offering the same hometown service that customers find at its retail shop based in the historic Wake Forest, North Carolina. It is this personal service, combined with great prices and selection, that has kept its customers returning.

ToadsAndTulips opted for the overlay mode in its product pages, allowing the user to concentrate directly on the video.

JewelBasket.com

With a selection of over 9,000 products to choose from, from charm bracelets to religious rings, it’s little wonder that JewelBasket.com has received top ratings at sites like Shopping.com and BizRate. The site makes sure to always keep to up to date on the newest jewelry trends, and ship to just about anywhere in the world.

JewelBasket chose to integrate Treepodia’s video player directly into the product pages.

 

Thanks for Trusting Us!

We’d like to extend our utmost thanks to our newest clients, and say:

Thank you for trusting us with your business!

Last month I wrote a post titled Ecommerce Video in the Wild that was dedicated to showcasing some of our client implementations. I figure our latest clients deserve at least the same level of exposure and so without further ado it gives me great pleasure to introduce the March edition of  ”Ecommerce Videos in the Wild“:

Americangolf.co.uk

With over 83 stores in the UK and Ireland American Golf is (confusingly perhaps) Europe’s largest golf retailer. Priding itself in having a cadre of store managers composed almost entirely of keen golfers, the chain’s staff boasts an average handicap of our staff is 7

American Golf opted to embed our  player in the product pages making for a gorgeous and seamless video experience for shoppers:

Premieremobilityscooters.com

For more than seven years the team at Premier Mobility Scooters have been providing shoppers with scooters and power wheelchairs. They are one of the largest onine resources for these types of products as wsell as other products related to providing quality of living for the elderly and people with disability.

Premier implemented our player embedded within their pages, enriching the product descriptions and providing a fuller experience for would be shoppers:

 

Markenkoffer.de

Markenkoffer.de is a shop dedicated to luggage and carrying bags. The site is based in Denkendorf and is managed by Thomas Rixner,Bernhard Ostermeier and Stefan Ostermeier who have grown it into one of the biggest German online shops operating on the web today.

This site also opted to implement our player in the overlay mode:

Thanks For Trusting Us

I’d like to give a big welcome to these newest members in the Treepodia client family and simply say:

THANK YOU for trusting us with your business!

This post was provided by our friend Corrie Davidson, who works as the New Media Coordinator & Product Manager for Washington based online marketing agency Captico. Corrie is a savvy communicator with an interesting perspective and I consider us lucky to have the opportunity to host her here

One of the clearest indicators of online shopping’s growing popularity is “Cyber Monday”.

For a few years now the the Monday after Thanksgiving has seen millions of Americans hit online stores searching for hot digital deals from the comfort of their homes.

The Cyber Monday phenomenon is clearly on the rise since first sarted in 2005 and according, to Internet marketing research company Comscore, this year spending crossed the billion Dollar threshold for this first time.

E-commerce has clearly entered the mainstream of the American public’s shopping habits. The question is what are you, as a business owner, doing about it?

Videos, as my friends at Treepodia can tell you, will certainly help you sell your merchandise once your shoppers are in your store. But how do you get them looking at it to begin with?

Introducing GoPromoIT

GoPromoIt is a new coupon-code based application hopes to help you solve that question. Installed as a button added to any ecommerce website it enables purchasers to share a link back to the site with their Twitter or Facebook friends. In return for the social advertising they thus provide the site they become eligible for a discount or deal predefined by the vendor. Sites must be able to take accept coupon codes in their checkout process as a prerequisite for using the platform.

Tested successfully on Wall2WallStickers and jewelry seller JJ Singh GoPromoIt reportedly came through on the promise to increase exposure. Traffic on these sites has spiked as high as 65% above preceding averages since implementing GoPromoIt. Denny Hamlin’s Speed Wash, a Virginia based car wash, also reported getting positive feedback for their discount offerings. The increase in traffic, one must note, did NOT come at the cost of increased bounce rates, indicating that the new visitors sent to the sites represented interested consumers and qualified leads.

It’s still early days for the service but so far the 50 or so businesses participating in the Beta phase pilot agree that GopromoIt seems to be  a great way to increase awareness and sales via a simple utilization of one of the most basic principles of the social web – the ability to harness “Word of Mouth” validation online.

GoPromoIt also actively promotes the brands who use its service on its website and its Twitter account.

Sharing Statistics – Facebook vs Twitter

An interesting by-product of GoPromoIt’s pilot is sharing statistics:

• Sharing on Facebook was 63% more likely than on Twitter
• 85% of users elected not to customize the promotion message offered by the system as default -

For more information on GoPromoIt, screen captures, and a walk through of how it works, check out: “GoPromoIt.com – Discounts for sharing with your social network”

Captico

The Challenges

Let’s be honest. As an ecommerce retailer you really want one thing: People to buy your stuff. It doesn’t matter if you sell a product, a service, or tea-cup pigs, all of your other goals and needs fit under the giant umbrella of getting people to buy your stuff. In an effort to achieve this goal, clients always tell me the same things:

- “I want more traffic to my website.”

- “I want to be listed first on search engine results.”

- “I want people to come back to my site again and again.”

- “I want people to interact with each other on my website.”

The Solutions

It sounds simple, but the truth really is this: If you want repeat visitors and business to your site, make it a place people WANT to come back to! Give them a reason to come, a reason to stay, and great content that is easy to share with their friends! But I won’t leave you with such vague advice. Lets look at practical solutions for getting your site in front of people.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is a phrase often bandied about by internet marketers, social media experts, and service providers. Basically it is a term used to encompass a variety of techniques used to increase a website’s ranking in search engine results. Using specific keywords in your page titles, urls, content, links, and even in your photos and videos makes your site more visible to the bots that crawl through the web looking for and categorizing content. Building useful information into your site, like how-to guides or tutorials, provides material that ranks well on search engines as people are more inclined to share it with their friends or colleagues – resulting in more links, more traffic, better search engine result listings, and more sales!

• Encouraging your visitors and users to actively engage with your site and each other through product reviews, discussion forums, or even something as simple as enabling comments on your articles or blogs will help with your SEO as well as increase repeat traffic.
• Once you have people active on your site, make it easy for them to share your content with others – use bookmark and link tools to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, or Digg. These sites are free to set up accounts on and can be used to drive traffic to your site. (Check out these guides for help on Setting up Your Twitter Account and Setting up your Facebook Page) This kind of off-site linking also helps with your SEO campaign.

• Showcase your products or services in an easy to understand and transparent way! Data continues to show that consumers research items online before they buy. “If we look at the success story of any unique product or service that was launched and required a change in consumer behavior, the ones that were successful were those which were able to win customer’s trust and offer a clear value proposition to the customer.” (http://www.technetto.com/blog/e-commerce-in-india/) Video is an excellent way to detail and highlight the features and functionality of your offerings. It is the closest thing to physically picking up and turning over a product like a shopper would do in the store and you can address common questions or misconceptions in your branded environment! Plus video SEO is HUGE, not only encouraging viewers to share with their friends, but also increasing your search engine ranking as video is 50x more likely to show up than text in google search results!

These practical tips will go a long way in increasing your market share. If you feel overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to ask for help! You may have friends or colleagues experienced in social media or who know enough basic SEO to get you started, and there are also great companies out there who can ramp up your business. So pick a task and get out there and sell your stuff!

Guest blogger: Corrie Davidson is the New Media Coordinator at Captico, LLC, a technology strategy firm focused on website development, online marketing solutions, and mobile applications.

Beyond expanding our own offering, we’re always on the look out for good strategic relationships, and partnering with M.A.D. Productions is exactly that.

Proud to have M.A.D. as our U.K ecommerce partner

M.A.D., for those of you unfamiliar with the company, is one of the top UK based e-commerce companies, particularly in the realm of SEO. Much like us at Treepodia, they service online retail sites of different sizes across multiple verticals. And much like us, they’re extremely focused on, and successful at generating ROI. So much so that they are responsible for producing over £125 million in online sales for their clients – that’s a lot of returns!

“We met through a mutual friend…”

The relationship between Treepodia and M.A.D. came about as many successful relationships do, through a mutual friend, or in this case a mutual client, Onlinegolf.com.

Onlinegolf is one of our oldest clients having been with us from the full production video stage back in 2008. In 2009 they moved to the automated videos of the smart video platform to more (cost) effectively showcase their entire product line, and ultimately increase conversion rates.

The positive effects were felt immediately (and continue to this day), with an 85% increase in conversion rate for people viewing video.

“Mutual Benefit kept us together…”

Based on these results and the recommendation of the client, both Treepodia and M.A.D. recognized the mutual benefits of their services – to help online retailers increase sales. With that, the partnership was formed.

In the words of Simon Peirson, our UK Director:

“As both Treepodia and M.A.D. are strong forces in the world of e-commerce, providing different services with a similar end-goal (i.e. bringing more business to our clients), this is an obvious strategic partnership that benefits all parties involved.”

Most of all it will benefit each company’s clients who will continue to see ROI based results and an increase in their online store’s profitability.

For more information about the Treepodia smart video platform, or to propose a strategic partnership, feel free to contact us now..