Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

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”

One of the interesting facts regarding the evolution of human cognition is that, as a society, our attention span  is dwindling.

According to a Lloyds research tracing the causes of home accidents, attention spans have shrunk from 12 minutes in 1998 , to around 5 minutes in 2008. The Lloyds research states that when asked respondents blamed ‘stress’ (18 percent) and ‘decision overload’ (17 per cent) as the main reasons for poor short-term memory and flagging attention spans.

Product Videos – How long is too long?

The relevance to online videos, of course, is that attention spans matter particularly in terms of determining the length of your product videos. You want to make these videos long enough to deliver all of your pertinent facts, yet short enough to maintain viewers’ interest until the end. The question is, what’s that magical length?

There are two basic stats you might consider when determining your norm:

1. The length of an average commercial
2. The length of an average online video

How have commercials evolved?

In terms of average commercial length, Wikipedia delivered an adept and, in light of the aforementioned dwindiling of attention spans,  predictable answer:

“In the 1950s and 1960s, the average advertisement’s length was one minute. As the years passed, the average length shrank to 30 seconds (and often 10 seconds, depending on the television station’s purchase of ad time)… However, today a majority of advertisements run in 15-second increments (often known as “hooks”).”

In other words, with the progression of time, commercial length has been reduced to about 15 seconds, with a maximum of 30. Sounds (and views) about right.

What’s the length of the average Online Video?

In terms of online video length, the average length is according to ComScore a whopping 3.5 minutes. This figure may be surprising until one realizes that ComScore’s number factors in ALL online videos, including full length television episodes on Hulu, etc.

Less is More – Keep your videos as short as possible

In general, as the saying goes (and for good reason), we say, keep ‘em short and sweet – more along the lines of traditional commercial lengths at most. While video may grab shoppers’ attention, it will likely only hold it for a short time. And remember, not everyone who presses play, will watch your video all the way through.

At 60 seconds more than half your audience is gone

As the above graph based on a TubeMogul study shows, at the 30 second mark you’ve already lost a third of your audience and after a minute you’ve lost more than half, so try and get all your information in as soon as you can, in the shortest amount of time necessary.

Beyond that, as with all elements of video, you will need to continually do testing to determine if length, is influencing your results (and to what effect), and adjust accordingly.

Image credit: DeaPeaJay

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