Treepodia – The leading Product Video solution for e-commerce

Treepodia enhanced products on Israeli Daily Deals site Cliqa

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.”

Deals become more engaging when presented in a video

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.

TruffleShuffle.co.uk has done extremely well by incorporating Treepodia's video ecommerce platform

Introducing TruffleShuffle.com

Why They Came to Us

TruffleShuffle’s Managing Director and CEO, Pat Wood, explains that though the company was aware of the growing demand for online video to accompany fashion products, the cost was a huge barrier for them as a small company. However,

“Once we saw Treepodia, we didn’t think there was any point to look at anyone else. They did exactly what we wanted. The technology was perfect and the price was brilliant, so there really was no need to look at anything else.”

What Ecommerce Solutions did We Provide?

What Return on Investment (ROI) did Ecommerce Videos Provide?

The return on investment for ecommerce videos - Rapid or long term?

As children we’re all taught the famous fable about the race between the turtle and the hare, and the moral of the parable is:

“Slow and steady wins the race”

It’s a turn of phrase with a great message, and the potential for being an effective business model.

With product videos, however, timelines are a bit different - they yield IMMEDIATE ROI

As you can see for yourself, online retailers see an immediate increase in CVR as soon as video is added to their product pages:

Ecommerce and product video's immediate ROI

But the race, as they say, is long. What happens to these improved conversion rates later?

Treepodia auto-optimization guarantees increasing ROI over time

Our ecommerce video solution, while it often shows immediate ROI in terms of increasing your online store’s conversion rates, has greater things in store for you when you decide to stick with it for the long run. The simple fact is that the longer you use our automated video platform, the greater your increase in CVR.

A/B testing guarantees positive results over the long haul

While the statistics garnered from our 200+ clients have proven that the addition of our automated videos generally generates an increase in CVR of between 30% and over 100%, overall the CVR individual customers experience increases gradually over time thanks to the inherent learning abilities of the Treepodia system.

How is that possible you may wonder? Shouldn’t results naturally trickle off over the long haul?

You would think so, but with the combination of continuous A/B testing and the automatic promotion of more successful video versions, over time, the Treepodia platform is able to learn from past shoppers’ behaviors, isolate top performing videos, show them more often, and as such, maximize each video view for the highest conversion rate possible.

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Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daquellamanera

Prestashop and Treepodia - A partnership made in ecommerce heaven

It gives me great pleasure to announce the launch of our new partnership with the Prestashop Ecommerce platform and shopping cart! Treepodia’s Ecommerce Video Prestashop Plugin is now available for download.

PrestaShop is an Open-Source e-commerce software, freely downloadable and easy to setup and use. The significance of the partnership is that our ecommerce video plugin is already integrated directly into PrestaShop for your use and benefit.

Cover your entire Prestashop catalog with Video in UNDER AN HOUR

With a few simple mouse clicks, Treepodia enables Prestashop E-tailers to automatically cover all products with dynamic videos in less than an hour. Click “Play” on the following video to get a better idea of what your Treepodia Ecommerce Video Plugin will do for you:

Benefits:

• The video content is always up-to-date with price changes, user reviews and special promotions
• The videos are syndicated to leading video sharing sites
• The videos are syndicated to the major search engines via a Dynamic Video Sitemap, to increase SEO

Requirements:

• The module is tested for Prestashop v1.2 or above to function

Download your plugin and join us now!
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Update:

As of version 1.4 of Prestashop the Treepodia ecommerce addon is included in the Prestashop download package. For a limited time only we’re letting you try it out for FREE! More details here: http://blog.treepodia.com/2011/07/treepodia-now-part-of-the-prestashop-package

Adding product videos to your ecommerce site
has never been so simple or inexpensive!

"Product Video for a Dime? NO WAY!!!"

Now, with our new “Essential Package”, you can cover up to 1,500 items in your product catalog with high-converting, dynamic videos for just $149. That’s less than $0.10 per video! Can you even think of anything else you can buy with a dime?

If you’re an online retailer looking for a cost-effective way to start implementing video on your site, then the Treepodia Essential Package is perfect for you.

Creating Ecommerce Video for less than it costs to host them

This introductory package includes the creation, hosting and streaming of up to 1,500 videos, as well as advanced, easy-to-use video analytics to measure and improve each video’s performance. All of these services are included in the $149 monthly fee. In other words, you get an entire video platform with all the essential elements for less than you’d pay many vendors for the hosting service alone.

Cover Your full catalog with high CVR Product Videos in HOURS

Plus, implementation is quick. Within a matter of hours, from start to finish, your product videos are live on your site. All you have to do is follow a simple three step process and you’re done. In fact, integration is so simple that you can do it on your own (non-techies included), without ever having to contact us, at all. Talk about convenient!

Click “Play” on the following video to get a better idea of what Treepodia’s Ecommerce Video Platform will do for your site:

Need more?

If you’re looking for something a little more sophisticated and/or robust (with more customization options or video versions per product), or your catalog is larger than 1,500 products, then we have other video packages to fit your needs including the Professional, Enterprise and Premium editions.

For more information on each of our video packages and what they include, you can visit
the Treepodia site or contact us today.

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Image credit: orangeacid

For the large part conversion funnels are traditionally thought of has having 4 distinct phases. These are:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Consideration
4. Conversion

Skip after the break to see how video contributes to the performance of the metrics associated with each one of these steps

Video = Your Conversion Funnel Super Booster

Video as an “Awareness” booster

In the Awareness phase our goal is enter our target client’s consciousness. Before Awareness the client simply doesn’t know that we even exist. Metrics we’d normally track to monitor our performance at this phase are:

• Monthly Visits – as an indicator of how many visits we’re getting
• Visitors – as an indicator of how many actual people are coming to our site

Video can be very instrumental in boosting these stats. Here’s how:

1. Syndication – Video content lends itself easily to syndication. The abundance of generic and niche video portals existing on the web represent multiple opportunities for exposure both to the general audience and to narrower well defined ones.
2. Sharing – Video content is easy and fun to share. Giving visitors multiple easy opportunities to socially engage with rich-media content increases the chance that they become syndication agents for us, exposing us to their social network. Remember – every time a user clicks that Facebook “Like” button next to your video it’s immediately exposed to their entire network.
3. SEO 1 – Pages with “High Engagement Content” like videos, sound clips, etc. are reportedly more likely to attain better search rankings as search algorithms are believed to consider them having better content due to the rich engagement they offer visitors.
4. SEO 2 – Thanks to Google’s Universal Search Results display, where videos are guaranteed 1st page exposure, videos have become an opportunity to “cut to the head of the line” simply because less people are likely to have video content eligible for display there.
5. SEO 3 – Youtube is now ranking in as the 2nd most popular search engine. Ignoring video content is ignoring the opportunity to get exposure there.

Video’s contribution to the “Interest” phase

The Interest phase is where our client is drawn in and educated as to our offering. Metrics associated with this phase are usually focused around making qualitative measurements of our traffic:

• How many pages does the average visitor to our site browse through?
• How long is an average visit?

Videos contributions to this phase due to its advantages for presenting content are probably obvious, however its worthwhile listing them just to be sure we’re making the most out of our video content’s potential:

1. Multimedia Presentation – Video usually touches two senses simultaneously (vision and hearing), furthermore when bullet points are included in the video a further level of interaction is introduced as reading triggers different learning centers in the brain from hearing and seeing. The combined effect is a significant increase of the mental imprint made with our prospects, which translates directly into an increase in the “Average Time on Page” metric.
2. Multiple Images – Video offers an opportunity to display multiple angles of the product both physically and experientially. We can show not only what the product looks like from both front and back, but also how the product generates benefits for users in particular scenarios. In fact instead of counting on a single snapshot to captivate our audience we now have the opportunity to tell them a story. Again this goes towards boosting our “Average Time on Page”.
3. Video is easy to Absorb – The effort required to absorb video content is negligible compared to that of reading and browsing through images. Reduced fatigue coupled with more engaging experiences is likely to encourage visitors to dally longer on each page and visit more pages, thus driving up “Page Views Per Visit”.

Considering video? Consider this:

In this phase our prospects have already matured to a point where they’re interested enough in our product to consider making a purchase. A crucial metric at this is “Bounce Rate”, as every bounce represents a lost prospect.

Videos effect on the Consideration phase is similar to the effect it has at the Interest phase, with one important difference: at the consideration phase a prospect is already considered to be at the point where they’re making their purchasing decisions. Ensuring your videos contain exactly the right messaging required to close the deal is an important and profitable enterprise that can only be executed via a process of continuous improvement based on constantly A/B testing different video versions.

Interestingly the mere availability of video content on a product page has been found to boost conversions regardless of whether site visitors bothered to watch the video or not. The reason for this is thought to be grounded on the fact that the presence of video content on the page reflects positively on the vendor, increasing visitor’s trust in the site and encouraging them to do business with it.

The Money Time – VIDEOS IMPACT ON CONVERSIONS

For marketers and salespeople the Conversion is where the beef is. This is where the all the effort invested in the site hopefully finally pays off. Metrics associated with this phase are very directly related to the quality of the sale:

• Conversion Rate (CVR) – How many visitors/visits were we able to convert into sales?
• Average Cart Value – How much money are we making on average from every deal closed?

Video can be instrumental in improving Conversion Rates, and indeed insofar as Treepodia’s platform is concerned there’s a wealth of testimonials for this spanning multiple ecommerce niches. Insofar as the Average Cart Value is concerned videos’ chronological nature lends itself to presenting product specific up-sale opportunities for each and every product.

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Image Credit: Je.T.

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.

Great Technology is Friendly - it works without forcing YOU to understand it

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

Despite the fact this a “Company Blog” I usually try to keep our posts focused on tips, hints and news about ecommerce videos and related issues. Since launching the blog about a month ago we’ve listed tips for using video to increase holiday season sales, debated how to measure the ROI of Social Media, listed video slideshow tools anyone can use for free and covered a whole bunch of similar topics. What I’ve avoided doing is blowing our own horn – I prefer having others sing our praises, and over the past week it seems this is exactly what’s happening…

Not adding video to your site is like Burning Money | Image credit: purpleslog

Electronics retailer sees conversions leap with automated videos

A week ago InternetRetailing’s Sarah Clark posted a story about the experiences ElectricShopping has had with ourecommerce video solution. Sarah reports:

“Electric Shopping has added Treepodia’s automated product videos to its site and has seen a growth in conversions of an average of 75% among shoppers who watch the videos compared with those who don’t, with increases peaking at 200% for some products.”

Sarah’s interviewed Electric Shopping’s CEO Rob Levy about his team’s experiences with video prior to using our solution:

“Previously we had videos for a very small percentage of our product catalogue because we simply couldn’t produce them quickly enough. On top of that, we had no way to measure their performance so we had no idea what benefit, if any, they provided our business.”

Rob’s final quote in Sarah’s article is the type of feedback we enjoy hearing the most:

“Because of the A/B testing and performance metrics Treepodia supplies, we can now see how many times someone looks at a particular product page, whether they viewed the video, and whether they purchased — and we definitely see a higher conversion rate among those visitors who watch the videos“

Not a week went by since Sarah published her story and we received permission from another client to list their experiences in our latest press release:

Sales on BedBathStore.com rise 69% with automated product videos

Yesterday our PR Nancy Hill published a press release based on the permission we got from Mike Reichman, COO of BedBathStore.com, to quote their case study as part of our publicity. In the release Reichman speaks of the impact our solution has had on BedBathStore’s sales:

“In just two months after we began using Treepodia’s automated online product video platform, our e-commerce sales of products that include video rose 69%. In addition, customer conversion was up as much as 300% among those who viewed the product videos.”

Reichman goes on to explain that his team elected to use our solution because:

“It was the only alternative we found that could cover hundreds of items quickly and with relatively low cost, and that also provided ongoing measurement and optimization”

Afterword

I don’t use this blog to tell you how wonderful we are because with posts like the ones I quoted above readily available online, I don’t really need to.

The question you need to ask yourself right about now is why you haven’t added videos to your product listings yet, and whether you can really afford to leave the revenue these will provide you unclaimed. Our pay-per-view ecommerce video solution can be up and running on your site by this time tomorrow.

What are you waiting for?

Contact us for details now…

Afterword

A few days after posting this I was notified that Shaun Ryan of SLI Systems did an interview with Treepodia client Lee Brown of Online Golf. During the interview Lee shares that people who view a video on their site are 85% more likely to buy than people who don’t. In Shaun’s words:

This is one of the strongest endorsements for online video I’ve ever seen

The original post on the SLI Systems blog is here: http://www.sli-systems.com/blog/2009/10/viewing-videos-increases-sales.html

Smart Video Gallery

A user-friendly interface that automatically chooses the highest converting videos on your website, and presents them as a video gallery (See it live):

The player from Forzieri.com's "Smart Video Gallery"

3D Video Gallery

An advanced design and functionality of the smart video gallery (See it live):

3D Video Gallery on Askingtv.com

Smart Video Banners

This application converts your videos to smart banners, determines which work better, and then promotes those with the highest performance. Smart video banners can be integrated anywhere on your website as well as external sites.

See a demo

Automatic Cross Sell Videos

These videos increase your average order and can be displayed either in the shopping cart pages or within the product pages themselves. You can provide us with your own cross sell information or, if you prefer, let our system automatically learn and determine your shoppers’ behavior in order to offer them the most effective, highest converting cross sell videos.

See a demo