Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

Although I’ve often written here about how great our smart Video platform is, how it improves the user experience, increases conversion rates, and generally makes life better for everyone – Every marketing professional knows that in sales, words are only as valuable as the numbers behind them, or in other words:

“The bottom line is only as good as the bottom line”

After you’re done feasting your eyes on the bombshell below you might want to scroll down and check a few figures on how Video is impacting conversion rates for Online Fashion Retailers…

Oh the joys of writing about the Fashion Industry... : ) Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thehearttruth/2173468676

Fasion Industry Retailer’s Video Conversion Figures – Q1 2010

As the table and graphs below show, my assertions about the value of video for retailers are well backed by hard data:

Fasion Industry Retailer's Video Conversion Figures - Q1 2010

• “No Video CVR%”
  % of Unique Visitors to view a product page who could watch a video, but DIDN’T, yet still added the product to their cart.
• “Video CVR %”
  % of Unique Visitors to view a product page who DID watch video and added the product to their cart.

Video's Impact on Conversion Rates

CVR Improvement Due to Video

The most obvious fact one learns from the data is this:

Visitors who watch product pages videos convert more than twice as often then those who don’t.

This data is in line with similar case studies we’ve published in the past showing that presenting video as an option for shoppers improves CVR even when the customers don’t watch them!

Conclusion – Online Retailers Ignoring Video are leaving Money on the Table

Online retailers seeking to increase sales would do well to investigate adding video to their site today.

Some of the key points to think about are:

What’s the most cost effective method of adding video to the site?

What products and offerings should receive video treatment first?

How will the the video be integrated into the site’s existing pages?

It’s important to remember that, although a few production videos might be great for retailers that only deal in a a very limited number of products, any online retailer that moves tens or hundreds of products will be poorly served with this type of solution. Furthermore production videos have no dynamic aspect – once created they’re impossible to change or edit so if your porduct details change they basically become useless.

If you’re an online retailer with a large inventory interested in covering your entire inventory with dynamic self updating videos quickly and cost efficiently contact us today : )

I came across a great expression this week, in a Business Week article – “haptic gratification”.

I must confess that in my ignorance I was unaware of the term “haptic”, which according to my dictionary means “of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.”

Haptic Gratification - relates to the sense of touch (image by mind on fire)

Haptic gratification as part of the shopping experience

The haptic gratification in shopping therefore is the ability for people to handle a product, in order to get a full sense of it and make a purchasing decision.
As all of us involved in the world of ecommerce know, one of the biggest barriers to online shopping is just that – that humans prefer to touch and feel a product before buying – something they obviously can’t do online.
It’s not just the sensory feeling they’re looking for in handling a product. The physical touching of a product allows shoppers to get a better sense of size, shape, weight, color and more.
Or as Sheldon Gilbert of Proclivity Systems says in the article:

“We’re emotive, sensory creatures, so we need to touch and feel to be comfortable with our consumer decision.“

Bridging the Haptic Gap

While, the internet and thereby online shopping by nature are not compatible with the haptic experience, what online retailers can do, is help ease the buying decision by bringing consumers as close of a hands-on experience as the medium allows.

Product videos are of course a great tool to that end, especially when executed well. All online stores offer static images of products, but these are not enough for the sensory shopper who wants to get more of a feel for the item. Product videos on the other hand offer a near sensory experience, allowing shoppers to see individual products from multiple angles in various uses, with a full narration of attributes.

Google only shows four results for the search term “haptic gratification”, but I think as ecommerce grows and we evolve the language around it to describe the type of shopping experiences we’re looking to create, it’s going to be a big one. At least it puts into words exactly what it is we’re trying to do.

Image credit: mind on fire

Ecommerce video myths debunked

I’ve just finished reading a well written post by Daniel Sevitt on the ReelSeo blog titled: “The Three Types of Online Video for Business“. Daniel writes well and covers his subject matter eloquently but when I finished reading I remained with the sensation that I’d been taken for a merry little ride.

Sales Are Only 0.1 Percent (?!?)

I know it’s a heavy accusation, but I can explain:
When someone writes a post titled “The Three Types of Online Video for Business” and mentions in it a reference to someone else’s “Top 6 Reasons B-to-B Marketers Need Videos” I guess I expect the word “Sales” to appear often. Daniel’s post has 2,178 words. The word “Sales” appears twice. That’s less than 0.1 percent…

Apparently the “Top 6 Reasons B-to-B Marketers Need Videos” are, and I quote:

Grab people’s attention instantly

Tell your story in less time

Bring your ideas to life

Make your site stickier

Create a buzz with viral video

Bring your website into the 21st century

What I learned from Eli Wallach about Sales

Call me coarse or unsophisticated if you like, but I’ve always believed there’s a lot of truth in the line uttered by Eli Wallach in the scene shown above, and taken from “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”:

“When you have to shoot…Shoot! Don’t talk”

Let me explain:
With all due respect to the 6 points Daniel quotes in his post, I’d like to make 3 points of my own:

1. The purpose of a business is TO MAKE MONEY.
2. Online retailers make money by SELLING PRODUCTS.
3. The primary purpose of online video for retailers is TO SELL PRODUCTS.

To paraphrase Wallach:

“Pardon me pilgrim but ‘Grabbing people’s attention’ (pt #1), ‘Telling a story’ (pt #2) & ‘Bringing ideas to life’ (pt #3)… Heck, that all sounds like a lot fancy talkin’ to me!”

Although ‘Bringing their website into the 21st century’ (pt #4) sounds really impressive, I’m pretty sure 99 out of 100 vendors would prefer using video to SELL THEIR INVENTORY.

Let’s go back to basics

Video, indeed any form of advertising or marketing, has little or no value for its own sake. Its value is as a means-to-an-end. For etailers that end is TO DRIVE SALES.

By that logic the best way to judge the addition of video to your site is by the impact it has on your bottom line. If you can get a good impact on your conversions for a low investment – GOOD FOR YOU, you’ve done well for yourself.

I might be old fashioned

I might be old fashioned, but getting the best-bang-for-the-buck seems to me to be what a good business is all about.

• Our experience has shown us that adding video to a product’s listing can impact the conversion rates for the product by anything from 35% to 300%.

• We’ve learned that premium & complex products often show greater impact on their conversion rates because clients are more inclined to make a hefty purchase after watching a video that explains a premium product’s benefits.

Going back to my bang-for-a-buck point from before, it’s every etailers DUTY to his or her business to get these conversion rates at the LOWEST COST and effort possible – no small feat when one considers the vast majority of online retailers have over 500 products in their catalog.

When one takes into consideration these facts it’s easy to understand why automated ecommerce video solutions able of creating thousands of product videos in a matter of hours, are readily adopted by retail leaders such as Ice.com, Diamond.com, EyeBuyDirect.com, Elady.com, ElectricShopping.com, and others.

I guess when you’re as successful as these guys you know only too well there’s “A time for talkin’ and a time for shootin’…”

Image credit: Daquella manera