Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

It seems as though 2013 was very much the year of short video. The successful launches of Instagram videos and Vine were some of the biggest web-video related news of 2013. These new platforms, while not a direct threat to Facebook’s social media hegemony, do encroach on its turf, especially insofar as sharing photos and videos are concerned, and with recent reports regarding Facebook’s flagging popularity with younger audiences, it’s no surprise the social giant is rolling out new features to hopefully stem, if not turn, the tide.

Facebook Videos Moving to Autoplay

After a few months of testing, including a launch of autoplay ads late last month, Facebook is scheduled to roll out autoplay for videos.

Facebook Autoplay Videos – How Does it Work

Facebook’s newsroom reveals the new autoplay feature will show videos from individuals (personal Facebook accounts or verified Pages) and videos from pages of musicians and bands already playing as they scroll into view. No need to worry about waking up your entire household at 3am just because you’re doing some late night trolling though. According to Facebook’s announcement the videos will be set to silent by default, and audio will come on when users click.

How is This Different and Why Does it Matter?

The change insofar as interaction is concerned is quite massive. Previously videos uploaded to Facebook or shared from Instagram would require an explicit click on a play button to start rolling. This is quite an interaction investment, and since people normally tend to accept default settings, it stands to reason a huge number of potential videos views was lost, especially if they happened to have less than stellar image thumbnails.

With the new autoplay setting Facebook will be benefiting directly from the way our eyes are engineered to follow movement, with the moving frames capturing our attention subliminally the moment they come into view on the screen.

What’s In It For Them?

It’s no secret video is the hottest content the web has to offer, so Facebook is understandably keen on ensuring it maintains a leading position insofar as where people chose to share, comment and interact with clips.

Direct revenue from video ads is estimated to mean big business too, with Morgan Stanley predicting Facebook could rake in approximately $1bn from new video ads in 2014, rising to as much as $6.5bn by 2020.

What’s In It For Us?

The good news for us marketers is that the engagement enhancements Facebook is releasing for videos benefit our videos too, increasing the value of every Share and Like we can score. We’ve repeated here time and again that social and video are very closely related thanks to the power of sharing. Facebook’s latest features just took that and put it on steroids…

To find out more about how video can help your business contact Treepodia and we’ll be glad to fill you in.

Ever since the advent of online retail the holiday season has seen a steady increase in ecommerce sales, with each year’s figures smashing the records set the year before. In 2012 online shoppers spent $43 billion during the holidays, and this year’s sales are expected to increase 15% and hit $62 billion.

Let our Dynamic Video Sitemap bring some Christmas cheer to your online sales

Some businesses (luxury and gifts to name a few) make over 50% of their annual sales during the holidays, so for them (and for everyone else really) it’s important to make the season count. That’s why we’ve made a big effort to release the latest version of our Dynamic Video Sitemap generator in time for the holiday rush.

What is a Dynamic Video Sitemap?

As we’ve mentioned here time and again, web video is a compelling and highly effective sales tool that increases conversion rates by as much as 85%, furthermore having video on your site can greatly improve your search engine rankings (videos are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of a Google search result). Unfortunately Google and other search engines are still quite ineffective at indexing websites’ video content, so many sites invest in video only to lose out on many of its benefits simply because the search engines remain unaware of their video investment.

How Do We Help?

Enter Treepodia’s Dynamic Video Sitemap tool. This solution ensures your product videos are automatically indexed on all major search engines, enabling you to reap the full benefits your investment deserves. We often see a full catalog of product videos indexed by Google just a few days after submitting the video sitemap. Depending on how many products you have in your inventory that could translate into literally thousands of new long tail search results.

An example of the type of ROI you can look forward to is provided by our client Modern Automotive Performance. Just days after submitting their Dynamic Video Sitemap, they started seeing 1st page ranking for many of their product names, with cool video thumbnails included in their listing (see a search for DEI Cool Tube – MAP hold first page ranking, with a video thumbnail):

Video thumbnail in search results

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Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keoni101/5299762128

Influence is a powerful attribute for video marketing strategies . If you have unlocked the power to influence your audience, then you have found the key to video conversion success. If you haven’t quite got there yet, perhaps it’s time to take a long hard look at your triggers to see why they’re not quite hitting your targets.

Including psychological triggers in your product videos increases conversions

We love triggers at Treepodia (the good kind), an event which can spark an action makes marketing efforts worthwhile and presents a clear case for ROI. Now, there are the blindingly obvious triggers (e.g calls to action) which spark actions, but then there are the not so obvious ones which help customers say ‘yes’ to what you’re asking them to do. A very clever marketing and psychology professor – Robert Cialdini  once noted a number of principles which in effect should help you with your ecommerce store. These include the following:

Reciprocity

This is basically when someone gives us something we feel compelled to give something back in return. Have you ever visited a supermarket and felt compelled to buy  100 grams of cheddar cheese because you tasted the free sample? Well, that was the principle of reciprocity.

If you’re an online retailer, of course you can’t pop into someones house to offer them a sample of your products, however the next best thing would be to surprise paying clients by shipping them samples of other products with their purchased product. This feeling of having received a gift that might earn you a second purchase.

Liking

This principle relates to how your product is perceived by customers. The more of a connection they feel with your videos, the more likely they will convert and purchase your product – that’s why the lady at the cheese counter gave you your sample of cheddar with a lovely smile.

Every element of your video should be ‘likeable’ – the video template, the voiceover, the captions – all these build a personality for your video. Bear your audience in mind too, and remember that different audiences have different expectations. A video template that will do well for a sports vendor will probably work poorly for a jewelry store.

Social Proof

It’s common knowledge that customers are more likely to buy your products if they have been recommended them by their family and friends. Make sure your videos have social links to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and of course Google +.  It may sound pretty obvious, but you’d be surprised to learn that a lot of ecommerce stores are forgetful when it comes to applying social links to videos. We discussed the importance of social sharing of product videos for ecommerce here recently.

Incentivise sharing videos before and after purchase, to increase your videos’ outreach and to bulletproof your ROI.

If you want to blast your video marketing efforts to reach your target ROI, allow Treepodia to step up. With our fantastic technology, we can convert your entire product catalog into trigger friendly product videos that will convert the socks off your customers.

Now, you may think it’s a bit soon to be talking about Christmas marketing campaigns, but we want to make sure you’re geared up for the year’s biggest ecommerce drive. Now is the time to get your ecommerce promotions ready, your marketing materials created and turn your analytics and onsite optimization up a notch. There’s a lot to think about around this time of year, and the pressure is high, so we’ve put together our list of essential Top 3 tips for preparing your ecommerce product pages.

1. Product Video Drives Christmas Sales

Product videos will boost your Christmas sales

Your product video will be vitally important to the success of your ecommerce campaign. We’ve demonstrated here often that product videos have a much bigger impact on purchasing decisions than than static photography. This is really unsurprising as a not only does video displays the product in motion with sound and action, but also the medium lends itself naturally to story telling – it’s much easier for a video to be compelling. Around the holidays customers are inundated with offers so standing out is a must for driving sales.

2. Customize your Clips - Offer Customers Something New

Your product video is going to be a big conversion driver, however just to get those extra conversions wrapped up for Christmas, it’s important to exceed a customer’s expectation at this time of year. Push the boat out; offer your customers extra shipping options, gift wrapping and better customer support. This particular time of year is highly competitive, therefore giving customers an extra incentive to buy your products is vital. Don’t forget to add these extra product details into your ecommerce video in order to make them stand out even more!

Our dynamic ecommerce video platform automatically updates your product videos anytime you add or change the description for any of your products, saving you the effort of doing this manually for each of your clips.

3. Social Sharing

Ecommerce activity will peak during the Christmas period. Last minute shoppers will be looking to find the best bargains for their hard-earned cash, and they won’t just be looking on your site for them. Social media activity will also be heightened as people reach out to greet friends and family. The convergence of these two trends make the holiday season a perfect social media marketing storm, so it’s in your best interest to ensure your product videos are easily shareable on social networks. After all, you’ve gone to the trouble of making your video holiday ready, may as well  put in the effort to give it the best chances to be seen. Our product video players come with social media sharing buttons already integrated into the platform. All you need to do is make sure you enable the option.

What next?

Treepodia enables e commerce businesses to create engaging product videos straight from their product page. If you’d like to up the ante this Christmas and create videos to showcase your products you can get in touch here.

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So far 2013 has been a great year for ecommerce video. We’ve not only witnessed video climb to be a top priority for most online merchants, but also witnessed some really great success stories as well, and really this shouldn’t come as a surprise given that over the past few years viewing product videos has become an increasingly popular habit of online shoppers. The trend has of course been fueled by the overall popularity of video, and accelerated by video’s popularity as shareable content on social media. This year alone we’ve seen Vine come into it’s own, the opening up of Instagram to videos, and the implementation of video on Pinterest.

Given all the progress we’re seeing in this space today it’s a safe bet video will continue to impact the way retailers do business next year (and for many years to come). Trends of note include regular integration of videos into product pages, interactive videos (both in advertising and as purchasing platforms), and an ever greater adoption of video content as a supplement or replacement to blogging.

Here are some Ecommerce video trends to look out for:

1. More Businesses Want Their Share of the Ecommerce Video Pie

The cost of producing video is steadily decreasing, It’s not just that video production gear is becoming increasingly affordable, but also that:

1. The mass adoption of smartphones, with their built in video shooting capabilities, is widening the circle of video hobbyists daily.
2. Merchants are increasingly aware of the availability of cost effective product video platforms like our own which automate video production and scale effortlessly (…and given the fact that we promise our clients a four-times return on investment it’s easy to see how more and more businesses are choosing to take the plunge)

The vast majority of ecommerce videos being put on the web these days isn’t coming from ecommerce powerhouses like Amazon, but rather from thousands of small to medium ecommerce vendors who want to enjoy the host of benefits product videos provide. After all, the professional media has been spotlighting for years that video is a phenomenal sales driver (Zappos according to some reports has seen sales leap 6%-30% for products accompanied by video), so it’s really not surprising that smaller businesses are gearing up for their share of the action.

2. Facebook Will Drive Video Advertising To All New Heights

People already watch more video ads online than ever before, but come October things are going to get really close and personal with the launch of Facebook’s new implementation of video advertising directly on user’s feeds. Businesses are going to have at their disposal a powerful combo of ultra personalized targeting, coupled with video’s compelling story telling capabilities. Something tells me this is going to quickly become a top priority for businesses’ advertising budgets.

3. Video Blogging for Ecommerce

As video increasingly becomes a prevalent and preferred form of expression on social media sites and elsewhere, more merchants will chose to integrate it into their marketing. Already many early adopting businesses supplement their marketing content with the occasional video, but as mobile phones make it increasingly easy to create, edit and upload decent quality videos on  the fly, adoption rates will climb quickly.

Mobile ecommerce and video – a match made in shopper heaven

Online shoppers are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to retail (both online and offline). Being in my (very) late 30′s I still remember days when bandwidth was an issue, video held no presence on ecommerce sites, and the only way to view an item (in my case it was most often clothing…) was to squint at a blurry photograph on the page. Being an indecisive shopper, this made choosing items online ever so tricky (…never mind making a decision on colors or patterns).

Thankfully those days are long past, and with bandwidth becoming commodity the chances of bumping into videos on ecommerce sites are increasing daily.
Stores have discovered video has the winning factor when it comes to converting customers and both established etailers and new comers are embracing video as a standard fixture.

Videos, unlike disconnected images and text, tell a STORY, and we all know telling a story takes customer engagement to a completely different level. Especially when the platform is mobile

Ecommerce Video Goes Mobile

Not only are mobile phones being used by online customers to browse products more than ever before, but it’s estimated mobile shoppers are 3x more likely to view a video than desktop or laptop browsers.

Increasingly we’re all witnessing shoppers browsing ecommerce videos whilst shopping in an actual brick-and-mortar-stores to satisfy a growing need to find out more information about products, and make the most informed purchase ( = save money, increase satisfaction, etc.).

In short video is not only a great way to showcase a product’s features, but it’s also increasingly influencing conversions in ‘real life usage’.

Nothing Beats Product Videos for Rapid  Delivery

Videos won’t replace the need for product pages, if only due to the different types of audiences out there (some people will always prefer READING details), but for getting succinct information on the go they’re unbeatable, making them a big help for customer needing to make quick decisions, whether in store or not.

Proud to be on PriceSpy

Normally we don’t like bragging (much) but sometimes the temptation is just too much to handle. This is one of those cases.

Recently we completed a pilot implementation with shopping intelligence and price comparison giant PriceSpy.co.uk.

Interestingly, despite being an obviously British site, PriceSpy is actually owned and run by Swedish company Prisjakt Sverige AB, a part of the international media group Schibsted ASA headquartered in Oslo, Norway.

The site aims to make the market more transparent by providing powerful product search and filtering tools, complete and independent price and product comparison services, and shop and product ratings in order to help consumers find the best online deals.

Commenting on the pilot, Mr. Erik Lorentz, Head of Communications at PriceSpy UK, said:

“As the leader in shopping intelligence, video plays an important role in getting the attention of those looking to make an informed purchase by using our search and filtering systems, which are key parts of the enhanced shopping experience we offer our customers. There is a high demand for video content from today’s web users, and we are therefore excited to be working with Treepodia in bringing video content to all of our markets.”

As a result PriceSpy has now extended the use of Treepodia’s smart video platform to cover all of its products on  and is in the process of adding videos to its sites in Sweden (prisjakt.nu), Norway (prisjakt.no) and New Zealand (pricespy.co.nz)…

Are you getting your slice of the Pinterest pie?

Spring is here and summer is fast approaching, and with the changing seasons many online retailers in fashion and related industries are working hard to drive more traffic and give good exposure to their new collections.

The Pinterest Power

One website increasingly valued as a source for generating quality traffic is up-and-coming social network Pinterest.

Launched as a closed beta in March 2010, the site’s growth has been phenomenally fast. It took only a year and a half to be voted by Time magazine as one of its “50 Best Websites of 2011“, and according to Nielsen in 2012 it showed the largest year-over-year increase of all the social networks in terms of both unique audience and time spent on the site.

Pinterest’s Audience is Largely Women

Interestingy, a recent study has found that not only are Pinterest users more likely to discuss issues related to possession and observation, but also the site’s audience is largely (80%) female. Both points that make it a particularly valuable source of traffic for fashion, footwear and accessory retailers.

Pinning Video

With so many of our clients being in these sectors our team has been working hard to enable retailers to drive more Pinterest traffic by adding videos to their boards. The combination of video’s high engagement rates with Pinterest’s demographic and usage patterns is a huge opportunity for fashion retailers. Giving “Pinners” videos to pin, rather than just photos, adds a whole new dimension to the level of information other users can learn about any given item.

Contact us today to get your Pinterest product videos

More?

Our VP from Marketing Dr. Melody King has recently published an extensive post detailing “How to Maximize Your Videos for Pinterest” on multichannelmerchant.com – check it out here.

First, let’s review the most important take-away from our previous post on the rise of video on the web. Adobe’s U.S. Digital Video Benchmark explains the situation very clearly:

Mobile video consumption rose more than 10 percent during Q4 2012.

Great, but what does that mean for you?

Video Drives SEO, Being Mobile Pushes Purchases

Mobile video is more interactive than text and images. Customers engage with a website faster and more easily when you present them with video content. The sooner they’re engaged, the sooner and more likely they are to make a purchase or perform a desired action. As mentioned video also drives purchases in another way – by helping SEO efforts and driving higher rankings on search engines.

As we’ve said before, video is 53 times more likely to get a page one Google ranking. And now Google is rolling out its Universal Analytics system, which tracks the behavior of your visitors more closely. You’ll be able to see exactly how your customers interact with the video on your site. More on Universal Analytics later…

Tablets Are Replacing Smartphones in Mcommerce

Mcommerce is big and growing bigger – Are your videos ready?

Mobile commerce has become a domain of its own, which has been dubbed Mcommerce. Early adopters, the ~6% of us who are typically the first to leap to embrace new technology, used their smartphones to make online purchases. Now that trend is switching over in favor of tablet users – They’re now driving more online purchases.

According to eMarketer:

“the rapid rise in mcommerce sales on tablets means that such purchases will account for 9.4 percent of all retail ecommerce sales this year, [whereas smartphones] will contribute 5.3 percent of retail ecommerce sales this year.”

Conclusion

Consider how your site appears on tablet devices. True, tablet screens are larger and accommodate more content, but your video might be bumped down the page where your users can’t see it, or worse, your site can become garbled. Make sure that your engaging video content jumps out at your potential customers the moment they load the page in order to increase your conversion rate.

Why choose when you can go both ways?

One of the questions you see keep popping up regarding online video is:

“Where should I host?“

The pundits, as always, sound off quite passionately both in favor and against the following doctrines:

• Self host on your own server
• Host on Youtube

Self Hosting

The Self  Host crowd, of which this recent article is a good example, typically argue that:

• Hosting on Youtube will give you limited (if any) SEO value for your video investment.
• Any back-links to the video will generate traffic back to Youtube, rather than to your own site.
• Youtube is a distracting environment and users might get drawn away from your content.
• etc.

Youtube

The Youtube fans, represented here, argue convincingly that:

• Youtube is the 2nd most popular search engine, one of the web’s most popular destinations, and as such a valuable source of inbound traffic. 
• Setting up a Youtube Channel is easy, fast and free.
• Youtube is an extremely reliable CDN (Content Delivery Network).
• Etc.

For Video SEO – Do Both!

The questions that comes to mind is:

Why do i need to choose?
Can’t I have my videos on Youtube AND self hosted?

It’s precisely due to our experience with this issue, and the type of questions we were getting from our clients, that we developed of one of our platform’s most popular add-ons – the Video Distribution service.

In a nutshell what this service does is distribute the product videos generated by our platform, not only back to the original product page – granting all the benefits of self hosted video, but also to most major video portals (including Youtube), guaranteeing our clients the best of all worlds.

To learn more about our Video Distributor service click HERE

For more on this topic you might want to check out this excellent summary by Phil Nottingham over at SEOmoz

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