Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

Most Etailers Have Poor Decision Making Processes

It never ceases to amaze me how despite the extensive online availability of massively powerful tools for improving conversions and sales, the vast majority of marketers & e-tailers still rely, almost exclusively, on “gut-instinct” (their own, or that of others) as the only system for making the decisions that manage their business. In my humble opinion this may well be the main cause such a vast percentage of online businesses fail, despite the relatively low overhead cost that going online offers when compared to a brick-and-mortar business.

From my experiences only few online retailers bother to study the statistics of their website traffic closely, and even fewer do so effectively – i.e. know what indicators are the most important for their business and how their day-to-day operations influence them.

This is a particularly sad state of affairs because the ineptitude can’t be traced back to a root cause that makes sense, for example a desire to avoid expenditure on software or resources. Some of the most powerful tools available for gathering statistics and acting on them effectively are available online for FREE.

Are You Optimizing Yet?

One example of an extremely powerful tool, that far too few people are using, is Google’s “Website Optimizer” service, which allows etailers to test how various combinations of changes to their website content will affect conversions, in order to choose the most effective one. Website Optimizer lets etailers choose what parts of a page they’d like to test – headlines, images, design styles, etc., and then runs an online experiment directing a portion of the site’s traffic to each variation in order to determine which content users respond to best.

Why Not?

Over the years I’ve studied this failing rather extensively as it represents what to me is a very intriguing paradox:
On the one hand the very fact a person succeeds at opening a business would seem to indicate a certain level of competence and diligence, however on the other hand that very same person is often unwilling or unable to carry that effort through by providing it with all the opportunities it requires for success. This despite the fact that this person often acknowledges freely their awareness that their ineffectiveness means they’re “Leaving money on the table” and losing their business as a result. The most obvious question to ask would be WHY???

Why Not Indeed…

After spending a fair deal of time pondering this I’ve come to the conclusion that the fault is NOT exclusively that of the entrepreneurs, a degree of blame must be laid at the feet of the developers and engineers that provide these incredible marketing tools.

Most Powerful Online Marketing Tools Are Too Complicated To Use

A well known paradigm of technology development is that all too often engineers develop products without consulting enough, or even at all, with their target audience. At the end of the process they end up with a product that is intuitive and easy enough for THEM to use, but NOT so for anybody else…

I think this may well be the case with many of the marketing tools available online today. Although they’re powerful and effective, and at times even free, they’re engineer-friendly design makes them simply unusable by the vast majority of the population. The fact someone is a great marketer, a driven sales person, and an industrious entrepreneur, is no guarantee that one has the skill sets required to operate a bit of software designed with an engineering audience in mind. Some might say that the exact opposite might be true (think why so few engineers become effective business owners…).

What could be done otherwise

One of the reasons so many people love Apple’s products, despite their technological limitations, poorer features and complete reliance on Apple’s closed marketplace, is because these products don’t require you to learn how to make them work. They simply work for you.

Apple’s products are designed around the core understanding that:

People don’t care about technology. They care about what technology can DO FOR THEM.

Why We’ve Opted For Automation

This truth can be extended just as easily to the world of ecommerce – At the end of the day when presented with the question:

“Do YOU want to increase your revenues by becoming an expert at operating our software, or do you want US to increase your revenues for you?”

9 business owners out of 10 will prefer to simply have their revenues increased (& the 10th is likely to be a “Power User” type with a strong affinity for technology…). This is precisely why we at Treepodia opted to automate as much of our service as possible, and are constantly pursuing new methods for increasing this automation.

We believe wholeheartedly that we serve you better by not burdening you with technobabble you don’t really care about ,and focusing you on what you do care about instead:

Your business results and bottom line revenue.

Now you tell me:
Assuming we GUARANTEE your ROI,
don’t you actually prefer it that way?…

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/firepile/438134633

On his popular “DigitalBuzzBlog“, Aden Hepburn recently published a post commenting on the latest video from the gang at Socialnomics:

“Social Media ROI is the hardest job in town”

In the post, largely based on a post published on Socialnomics’s own blog, Aden claims that:

“Everyone knows that trying to measure Social Media ROI is the hardest job in town. It’s so diverse in every application that there is no single (or simple) way to measure all the outputs into a single report, let alone track sales indirectly from the effects of their social presence.”

Granted, a single dashboard for measuring the effects of your Social Media efforts, isn’t something I’ve come across yet. However there are a number tools that can give you a pretty good idea, especially when used together.

Introducing Better Google Analytics

For those of you using Firefox there’s a free and funky solution I’ve been using for a while and highly recommend: The “Better Google Analytics” GreaseMonkey scripts by Erik Vold.

Better Goolge Analytics add, amongst other nifty features, a set of social media related data to your standard Google Analytics dashboard. Since Better Google Analytics is a GreaseMonkey script all you have to do is install the addon and your good to go – simple, quick and zero risk.

Do you Youtube insight?

Another tip is the splendid “Youtube Insight” dashboard accessible with any Youtube account.
Once you have enough volume, Youtube Insight provides great demographic data regarding the people who’ve viewed your videos. If most of the views for your video come from embedded views on your video you can also easily cross reference the Insight data with the any other stats you collect.

Tubemogul for video analytics

My last tip is also related to video:
Tubemogul, an excellent video syndication platform, has a nice analytics panel for following cross domain video campaigns that they make available to free accounts as well. You’re welcome to learn more about what they do from the following video presentation I found on their homepage:

Measuring Social Media ROI – Not easy, but not impossible either

Indeed a 1-stop-shop for tracing and proving Social Media ROI is, as of now, still unavailable. But, if you’re prepared to invest a little extra time, you can piece together a pretty complete picture from the fragments that are available.

Does Microsoft have a LookingGlass up its sleeve?

As a final note, for those of you who remember, in September the web was all a-buzz about Microsoft’s LookingGlass which will supposedly finally answer the market’s need for a one-stop Social Media analytics panel. I Guess we’ll all just have to wait and see…

Epilogue

Funnily enough, an hour after publishing this post I found an excellent post by David Berkowitz that lists no less than 100 ways to measure social media. A day later I ran into a great post by Urs Gattiker of SocialMediaToday, that did an excellent job of analyzing why Social Media ROI analysis often fails and suggested a few point for planning strategy that helps avoid these pitfalls.

image credit: annia316

Recently I ran across a post titled “Is Your Video A Vehicle Or A Destination?” on the ReelSEO blog, which I frequent regularly as it is, in my opinion, one of the finest resources online for following the video marketing scene. This particular post got me thinking about the lingo around video, and people’s expectations of what video should be able to do for their businesses.

The Viral Video Grail

The premise of the post is, quite rightly, that the buzz around video-for-marketing these days tends to focus on what is commonly described as “viral videos” – videos that due to their amusing, shocking, sexy, or silly nature, tend to spread from one viewer to the next via various sharing mechanisms (email, social media, collaborative bookmarking etc.).

A point worth considering is that “Silly”, “Shocking” or “Sexy” might not be right for your business – The following “Afro Ninja” video from Ebaumsworld has had over 8,000,000 views on YouTube, and while there’s no arguing that it’s a funny 18 second clip, I doubt it’s very useful for selling anything besides slapstick humor…

Is the Viral Video Quest right for your business?

It seems that too much attention many businesses, large and small alike, are giving marketing video is focused on the quest to create THE video, that singular masterpiece of shareable genius that will spread through the net like wildfire through the collaborative efforts of the enthusiastic masses. Little thought is given to the following facts:

1. Just as with any other form of advertising – the campaign is not a goal unto itself. It’s a means to an end. A million hits on Youtube might be great, IF you can harness them to push SALES.
2. These videos are extremely difficult to manufacture and their “viral” component is nearly impossible to predict. The sad truth is that most of the lucky mavericks fortunate enough to have created a video that “went viral” were one shot wonders who were unable to recreate their success.
3. The investment and time spent on attempting to create a viral video will yield a much safer and more predictable ROI when allocated to enriching product listings with video.

Fame – it’s a good thing.

The thing is, it’s not a goal that suits every business equally – “Too much of a good thing” applies here too…

A small or medium business doesn’t necessarily need millions of video views and is probably ill equipped to deal with the publicity Tsunami that might follow.

What your business needs is to reach targeted audiences and achieve sales conversions in a measurable and consistent fashion. The ability to then recreate this process is infinitely more precious than any singular publicity burst.

In short:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to some occasional risk taking, and I certainly respect creativity.

If you’ve got a great idea for an easy-to-produce video that you feel has the potential of exploding online and making you rich overnight – give it a shot!
It’s worth it just for the sake of not denying yourself the joy of pursuing your dream. BUT…

Do yourself a favor and don’t focus ALL of your business’ video marketing efforts around this project – especially if you don’t have a huge budget.
The data proving the positive effect simple product videos will have on your bottom-line is readily available online. ReelSEO and others have covered this subject often.

How often have you won the lottery?

Getting your video to go Viral might be like winning the lottery.
Have you won many lotteries lately?
Why not creating content that actually sells while you wait…

Image credit: Zack Sheppard

This morning I read a great guest post on InternetRetailing by Sheila Dahlgren, senior director of marketing at Adobe Scene7.

Sheila explained the virtues of interactive videos and gave a few examples of vendors already using this technology:

…ONLINE dressing room KnickerPicker allows users to select models and lingerie styles, then zoom and spin to see all angles. Consumers choose the model which most closely resembles their body type to view from all angles how different styles of lingerie would look…

…US retailer JCPenney offers customers the ability to view a runway show and interact by grouping clothing styles, fast forwarding and viewing using a 360-spin and a zoom function.

…AN entertaining example of interactive video use can be seen on French mattress retailer Matelsom’s website. Consumers can select two models — people of all different shapes and sizes are available — and see how their chosen mattress performs when their models sit on, jump onto, or lie down on the mattress. This replicates the in-store experience and illustrates what people do (or would like to do!) when considering buying a mattress.

No doubt Interactive Video is cool

It’s obvious this type of interactivity is fun and cool. I’m even pretty sure the metrics are there to prove it gives ROI.

BUT… Interactive Videos are complicated too

Interactive videos are labor intensive custom tailored solutions that require the involvement of specialists. This means they have relatively long time-to-market, little scalability and high costs. As the examples Sheila provided prove they are currently a solution accessible only to the “big boys”.

Is the extra effort justifiable?

Considering “traditional” video enhancements for product pages are a proven method for double digit conversions increases, is the additional expense required for interactive video already justified?

Let me elaborate:
This morning I read on InternetRetailer that Shoeline.com reported a 44% increase in conversions on product pages enhanced by video. Sheila herself reports in her post that eBags.com saw 50%-139% increases in conversion rates for video enhanced pages.

These figures are very much in line with what we at Treepodia have been witnessing with our own clientèle (ice.com, diamond.com, eyebuydirect.com, etc.).

My point/question is:

• We know our clients getting these benefits from using our low cost, automated product video solution.
• We guarantee it can cover a vendor’s entire product catalog within 24 hours from initial contact.
• The effort required on the vendor’s part is nothing more than to supply us with their catalog’s XML.

When all this is taken under consideration, can the huge extra costs required for interactive video, in terms of time, money and complexity, be justified by substantially better performance metrics over “regular” or automated product video?
Image credit: http://bit.ly/4e9I3I

Recently I read an interesting post by Hi Jennifer Meacham on PracticalEcommerce.com titled “Innovative Video Use Increases Conversions for Merchants.” The post’s main theme is that using spokespeople videos on your site can be very effective.

Don’t mind me,
I’m just walking back and forth on your screen…

Although many of us find these types of solutions highly annoying (especially when they’re set as autoplay), online spokespeople are actually an interesting solution to the whole ecommerce-video paradigm. Their effectiveness builds on our brain’s predilection to trust human figures, and especially faces that talk to us.

Problems of Scale

There is a catch however: to maximize effectiveness you need to invest in creating a unique video of your model walking and talking while demoing EVERY item in your catalog. This is fine if you have a store that only sells a few items, but becomes highly impractical for any store that sells tens, hundreds, or thousands of items. The solution isn’t “scalable”.

Another scale related issue is the ratio between your model’s size and your product’s size. If your selling handheld items which are significantly smaller than a human being, your product would show up near invisible in comparison to your model’s body. Definitely a case in favor of having a talking head instead of a full body.

What to do? What to do?

I recently heard a pod cast by Jennifer’s PracticalEcommerce.com associate Kerry Murdock, who conducted with Faculte.com’s CEO Maher Hakim.

Maher advocates approaches that I tend to believe are more effective than the spokesperson model:

“Don’t spend a lot of money on producing the video… you can create really nice video by stitching together some photos & then putting in some music and audio and narration on top of that. It looks and feels like a video to the end user”

This is precisely what our ecommerce video solution does in an entirely automated fashion: In a nutshell we create product videos directly from an etailer’s XML, with little or no human involvement at all (narration still requires it). The automation of the process enables us to cover/handle an ecommerce’s entire catalog with video within 24 hours. Our low production costs also mean we can offer our solution on a Pay-Per-View basis that guarantees vendors see ROI for their videos.

Furthermore, we don’t simply create a single video for each product, but a few, for which we then run automated A/B testing for to measure optimal conversions – perpetually dropping the less effective versions.

We’ve learned with our own clients, that boosting product listings with video this way increases conversion rates by anything from 35% (for eyebuydirect.com) to over 300% (for certain product pages within Forzieri.com‘s site).

Video is quickly becoming THE platform of the Web. Whether it’s to catch up on your latest television shows, share a funny YouTube clip that seems to be making the rounds, or viewing a webinar, video is where it’s at. Part of this trend is that video is becoming increasingly prevalent in online sales as well.

Online videos boost conversions

Studies show significant increases in online sales for retailers that incorporate video as part of their product presentations. ReelSEO have compiled a formidable list of resources explaining online videos’ effect on search engine placement and video has the obvious direct impact on retail performance. Our case studies show Ice.com, a web-only jewelry retailer, experienced a 40% rise in conversion rates on products highlighted in online videos, while Forzieri.com, an online vendor of luxury fashion accessories, experienced a 100%-300% increase in sales on products featuring video presentations.

How does online video impact conversions and sales?

Video is a multi-media platform that has the benefit of addressing two of your consumers’ senses simultaneously. As consumers get a better look at the product they intend to purchase, they hear narration explaining its features. Sights and sounds simultaneously combine to create a strong mental connection that enhances customer confidence. We’ve seen this enhanced confidence increase conversion rates for retailers selling everything from golf clubs to toasters. Onlinegolf noticed an 88% rise in their conversion rates on products that were accompanied by video. Sellpoint has found a 35% increase in sales after costumers had seen videos of the product.

Production options

Retailers interested in hopping on the video bandwagon are often familiar with only a single solution – creating or hiring out for their own custom production videos:

• Custom Production Videos
  One of the reasons video is still relatively rare on e-commerce sites is because many retailers are daunted by the associated expenses and complications involved with custom production videos. Having to produce videos for an entire catalog of inventory is no small task. Retailers find themselves in the position of requiring script writers, camera men, producers, an acting cast and all the supporting personnel. Location scouting is in itself an issue. It’s easy to understand why creating video from scratch has such a high barrier to entry.

A second option for producing video that is less costly and complicated is, in our experience, beginning to gain traction with retailers seeing a swift entry into the world of video enhanced product pages:

• Automated Video Platforms
  Automated video solutions transform XMLs of a vendors inventory into automated video presentations that can be left as is or enhanced further with narration. Our platform enables us to offer clients their entire inventory enhanced with videos like the one above within 24 hours from contact. All our clients do is supply us with their products’ images and data; Treepodia takes care of the rest. Check out the example below:

Auto-optimizing video for conversions

A further advantage of selecting our automated video platform is the our unique metrics module that automatically optimizes your video presentation by monitoring, detecting and prioritizing videos with high conversion rates. We’ve seen this module deliver convincing results not only for the vendors mentioned earlier but also from our other customers: Emjoi, drinkstuff, electricshopping.com, onlinegolf, eyebuy direct, Markenkoffer & Erhard Sport.

Video simply works

Within 24 hours you can begin enjoying increased sales with Treepodia generated product videos.
For more information on how you can benefit from Treepodia, please contact us via Twitter or through our website at Treepodia.com.