Roundup of eCommerce Video Marketing Statistics - Impact of Online Video on Sales

September 10, 2010

 

eCommerce Video Drives Conversion, Sales and Traffic While Reducing Returns

* Internet Retailer reports that visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not, based on OnlineGolf.com results. (Internet Retailer, April 2010)

* Retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors. (Comscore, August 2010)

* In tests merchants such as Archie McPhee experienced conversion rate increases averaging 30%, with a range from 12% to 115%. (Practical Ecommerce, November 2008)

* According to Internet Retailer, Shoeline.com saw a 44% increase in online sales conversions by using videos to showcase their products. “With such positive results on our existing videos, the goal right now is to add video to as many of our products as possible,” says Frank Malsbenden, VP and GM of Vision Retailing Inc., the parent company of Shoeline.com. (Internet Retailer, January 2009)

* Zappos reports a 6% to 30% increases in sales for products with video. (ReelSEO, December 2009)

* Discovery Channel increased video streams 123% by properly implementing video sitemaps

* 20% of all males surveyed cited online video as a significant influence in recent purchases of jewelry and watches. (Ad-ology Media Influence on Consumer Choice survey, September 2008)

* Ice.com found that viewers who chose to view video converted at a 400% increase over those who did not. Ice.com also credits video with decreasing returns by 25%. (Internet Retailer, December 2009)

* Implementation of video decreased returns by 27% for PFI Western. (Videocommerce.org, December 2009)

* Simple video merchandising best practices can nearly double the impact of eCommerce video (Invodo research, February 2010)

* Shoppers who view video at Onlineshoes.com convert at a 45% higher rate than other shoppers, and the site has seen a 359% year-over-year increase in video views. Product pages with video have higher conversion rates than product pages without video. (Internet Retailer, February 2010)

* With proper optimization, video increases the chance of a front-page Google result by 53x. (Forrester, January 2010)

* Video in email marketing has been shown to increase click-through rates by over 96%. In response, the number of marketers planning to use video in email campaigns has increased 5x since the beginning of 2009. (Implix 2010 Email Marketing Trends Survey)

* Consumer packaged goods firm Reckitt Benckiser found that online video delivered a 6% increase in in-store sales. (Reckitt Benckiser / Nielsen, May 2010)

* Rich media ads containing video increase purchase intent by 1.16% and drive success more than four times that of Flash animation. In addition to the increase in purchase intent, video ads appear to increase consumer brand loyalty. Viewers favored a brand 2.30% more when exposed to rich media with a video ad opposed the tiny 0.15% increase simple Flash animation experienced. (DoubleClick, The Brand Value of Rich Media Ads, June 2009)

Consumers Use and Trust Online Video

* From July 2009 through July 2010, the number of US video viewers on retail sites grew 40%, outpacing 17% growth in the number of total US online video viewers. 96% of online shoppers also watch online video. (Comscore, August 2010)

* Video views doubled from 14.8 billion to 33.2 billion between January 2009 and December 2009. 86.5% of all US Internet users watched online video during the month. The average viewer watched 187 videos and 12.7 hours of online video during the month. (Comscore, February 2010)

* A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research. (Forrester, January 2009)

Online Retailers are Implementing eCommerce Video

* 33% of online retailers plan to add video to their sites in 2010, making it a higher priority than any other advanced feature. (eMarketer, March 2010)

* Leading online retailers added video to their sites in 2009 to increase online sales. PetsUnited, the owner of 10 eCommerce sites, saw a 50% jump in average sales when shoppers made a purchase after viewing a video. (eMarketer, January 2009)

* eCommerce video success can be clearly measured. Conversion rate, cart abandons, increased traffic and View Through Rate (VTR) are key to demonstrating success. (Practical Ecommerce, March 2010)

* eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau characterizes the benefits of video as including “…a lower number of abandoned shopping carts, reduced return rates, and higher sales.” (eMarketer, January 2009)

* Search engine optimization (SEO) and online video were the two top priorities for online retailers in 2009. Online shoppers who viewed video had a larger shopping ticket than those who viewed traditional rich media such as flash animations. (Internet Retailer, January 2009)

Tags: comscore , e-commerce video , online videos , video social media , web video

Add comment

Video SEO Critical to E-Commerce Success - QVC vs Overstock.com Example

July 22, 2010

This is the story of two respected e-businesses who deployed video on their websites. One did it with SEO in mind and reaped the rewards in Google rankings and resulting page visits and sales. The other took an enormous cache of video content, uploaded it onto a website and left it there – unoptimized, untagged and unprofitable.

Almost any business moving to the web understands at some level that search engines drive traffic. The 100 best companies in Internet Retailer’s Top Retailers Guide report an average of 30 percent of their traffic is search-engine delivered. And by now, most e-businesses realize the importance of deploying video as a means to increase website visits. It is with this knowledge in mind that retailers such as Zappos, Overstock.com and Newegg have deployed thousands of videos across their websites.

Given the apparently widespread awareness of the power of video online, it is amazing to see that many large retailers are investing in multimedia without taking the steps to put those elements to work for search engine optimization.
The Case for E-Commerce Video SEO

Companies that understand the technical steps to achieving a higher SEO ranking with video will make the most of their investments. For example, Overstock.com applied the required technologies — such as text and markup in the page surrounding the video, site-wide descriptive formats, video site maps and proper video embedding — and its 56,000 videos were recognized by Google.

It is equally important that e-commerce sites deploy video across their entire product catalog. It is not enough to simply post a few videos on the homepage and other main pages. For instance, eBags.com manually produces videos that are indexed on Google, but because it is so expensive to produce each video for its entire (large) catalog, the company can only have a limited number of videos. This results in limited video SEO when users search for products, and other sites with video will pop to the top of the results page.
QVC vs. Overstock – Optimized Video Delivers

QVC clearly understands how to make compelling video. The cable shopping network broadcasts live 24 hours a day, 364 days a year. It has a massive store of multimedia and it has loaded tens of thousands of videos onto its website. But one would never know it by the number of QVC videos indexed on the major search engines. Google has one. There are two others on Bing and four on Yahoo!. That’s a total of seven indexed videos for a company that is #11 on the Internet Retailer 500. QVC’s wasted resources are a reminder that the number of videos a business offers on its site isn’t as important as what it does to properly deploy them.

Let’s compare QVC’s approach to that of Overstock.com. The latter, which sells everything from crib sheets to faucets and jewelry at discount prices, rivals QVC in the number of videos on its site. But those multimedia assets are working much harder for Overstock.com, since the retailer took the extra step of optimizing its videos to increase search engine rankings and drive traffic. There are more than 56,000 Overstock.com videos indexed on Google, and the revenue implications of that fact are clear. Here is just one of many examples; if you do a standard Google search for “La Strada ceiling fan,” you’ll see Overstock.com as the number one result, with a video thumbnail accompanying the text link.

We’ve learned from our customers like Overstock.com that video SEO is an important aspect of their considerations when deploying multimedia website elements. From large businesses like Overstock.com to more targeted verticals like real-estate site Sawbuck Realty, we’re seeing that optimized video delivers. With tens of thousands of videos, Sawbuck Realty, for example, now views this offering as a compelling differentiator in a competitive market and an effective way to enhance search engine rankings.

Aside from the SEO benefits that video provides, commerce sites are offering customers an improved website experience, and subsequently experiencing conversion lifts. In terms of SEO, top retailers consider the ability to get their videos indexed on major search engines an important part of their catalog-wide video deployment. Video and search engine traffic are key drivers for web businesses, and video SEO can do a lot to extract the potential of these rich, multimedia resources to support search engine traffic growth.

Tags: e-commerce video , online videos , video seo , vseo , web video

Add comment

What is Premium Online Video?

July 07, 2010

 

Premium Online Video [vid-ee-oo, noun, derivation Web 1.0]: Video consumed on-demand, on a computer or other Internet-connected device. Content must have previously been consumed by a great many more people, simultaneously (see: linear, analog, TV Guide) on a non-connected video viewing device (i.e. your television set).

That's true. Look it up.

It's hard to argue that if there really was a definition of premium online video today, it would read much the same, whether you were setting out to describe the concept from a viewer's or advertiser's perspective.

For viewers, more than production value or even celebrity, premium is a matter of value consistency. If I tune into "30 Rock," there's a high probability that I will be entertained in a specific way. That is still extremely hard to find in content that isn't primarily distributed on TV first. Viewers also derive value from a shared experience on and offline.

Marketers also assign a premium value to consistency -- it helps them align messages and assure that their brands are appearing in the right place at the right time.

What else separates premium video from everything else?

A food-products client recently told me that their entire online video strategy comprised something called a "TV replacement" initiative. Yes, that means they take some money from linear TV and shift it to the exact same programming online.

Fair enough. Maybe that's exactly what they should be doing. That's probably not what the TV networks really want in the long run, but that's fodder for a different article.

But think ahead a few more years. Ok, say 10 years. All TVs are IP-connected, mass audiences are substantially harder to find, and so on. What will the new measure of premium be when the TV Guide definition fades away?

First, consistency of the product on every level remains important, at least for brand advertisers. If they are aligning with content they consider to be premium, and are paying a premium for, it has to look tomorrow more or less as it looked yesterday.

Second, it will attract a loyal audience. The premium moniker hangs on the audience having a real relationship with the content, because when a marketer taps into that relationship, they get significantly better ROI.

Data, of course, is the third and most important measure of the new premium. Not just a few meta tags of information, but deep knowledge about how and why the content was produced, its historical relationship with a wide range of viewers, and unique information about its component parts. Data about the viewer and the content will combine with the unique passive rating of a video view (if I watched it, I liked it) to deliver a significant improvement in alignment of viewer and advertiser.

Today, consistency, loyalty and rich data don't often come together outside of content that first appeared on television. TV producers and networks are just beginning to understand the challenge of owning the definition of premium in a way that works for their future business.

But outside of TV, anyone producing ad-supported content should be thinking about these same three core markers of premium value to advertisers. Strip away the TV Guide valuation of premium, and think about how to establish consistency, loyalty and data in a way that suits your model for production and distribution.
 

Tags: online advertising , online videos , viral videos , web 2.0

Add comment

How Online Video Can Increase Your Sales By 30%

July 01, 2010

By Jeff Bullas

The use of online video is continuing to grow and develop as higher broadband speeds become more widespread worldwide and the appetite by the younger generation for viewing rather than reading.

The old chestnut phrase , “A picture is worth a thousand words” begs the question, “How many words is a video worth?”

Zappos (an online shoe retailer) does shoes and social media remarkably well and utilizes online video very effectively.

They use video to engage with the buyer as much as possible. Their use of video to create “virtually” the reality experience of a bricks and mortar store, as if the buyer were in store and “more”continues to evolve.

They use online video to

* Describe their shoes
* How to use the product
* To demonstrate

Note: The videos are about the products, are with real Zappos employees and not models or actors… a bit of authenticity happening here, not stock photos with incredibly handsome and beautiful people.

They are testing interactive video on their site for Nike products. The company has launched interactive product videos.

The website provides the following 9 Functionalities, Features and Future Plans

* Allows viewers to click on items in the clips before landing on product detail pages.
* It can signal to consumers if an item is out-of-stock, discontinued, or part of a special offer.
* If the viewer mouses over a shoe in a video, it becomes highlighted, alerting the person that the item is clickable.
* Users are then taken to a product detail page in a separate browser window where the item can be added to a shopping cart.
* Zappos.com’s media player also allows shoppers to post the videos to their Facebook and Twitter profiles while the clip continues to roll.
* The 10 product videos currently on the site are each around one minute long.
* plans to leverage the interactive videos by incorporating them into its user-generated-content program (UGC).
* Its “Daily Shoe Digest” is one of the few e-mail newsletters — in any niche — featuring UGC (User Generated Content) 100 percent of the time.
* Site visitors will be encouraged through future marketing messages to create product video reviews that will also have the interactive features.

Selling products directly from online video content, known as “hot-spotting,” is an advertising niche that’s growing slowly but surely. For instance, earlier this year, H&R Block began utilizing YouTube’s annotations allowing viewers to click on specific items in a video linking to a landing page or another video. And last year, clothing brand Express sponsored Vogue magazine’s online reality show, Models.Live, which featured clickable overlays in a manner combining product placement and direct response marketing.

So what are the effects of using video?

Zappos’s experience has shown “It obtained increases of 6 to 30% in conversions ..for products that use video”.

Note: This has prompted Zappos to strive for 50,000 videos !!! next year (they have about 8,000 currently), they will include “10″ fully working studios in house in 2010 to handle all of it.

Zappos, last month partnered with Overlay.TV and rolled out “Engagement Pages” for specific brands, where the videos engage users with clickable overlays. These overlays allow users to shop within the video content, pull up additional information and click through to product specific landing pages. Users can also record product video testimonials directly from the engagement pages.”

Online at Zappos you can see the shoe from “7″ angles and “3″ different magnifications (see Nike page at Zappos) and the screenshot below.

Note: This goes a long way to overcoming the issues of online shoppings “experience gap” that shopping at bricks and mortar store provides.

This is starting to show how “real” an online store can become, as online video enables a more pervasive and integrated experience within an ecommerce website.

For a good resource on Online Video “Best Practices“ click here

So how are you using online video to good effect? Like to hear your stories and the tools and apps you are using.

Tags: internet TV , online advertising , online videos , viral videos

Add comment

Survey of Online Video Services and Portals

March 30, 2010

By Sean Ashcroft

sean.ashcroft@mac.com

BBC iPlayer
iPlayer began life, uncertainly and largely unloved, in October 2005 as Integrated Media Player. Now, though, it is an established part of the BBC firmament.
Currently, over 400 hours of video is encoded a week for iPlayer, using a 60-strong server farm.
Programming that’s fewer than seven days’ old can now be viewed on virtually any platform, including Windows, Macs, Linux, Nintendo Wii and selected mobile phones (including iPhones).
While rights agreements mean iPlayer programming is unavailable as streams or downloads to non-UK users (aside from news and sports highlights), the BBC admits “it is aware of demand for an international version”. A case of watch this space, perhaps.

ITV Player
Like BBC iPlayer, ITV Player is available via the broadcaster’s main website. Until September 2009, ITV Player used Microsoft Silverlight, but then followed the lead of both iPlayer and Channel 4's 30 day catch-up service 4oD by switching to Flash.
All of ITV Studios' shows – and the majority of independently produced shows – feature on the service, but, sports, movies and imports don't.
In December, ITV announced it is to launch an ITV Player Facebook app. As well as catching up on missed programmes, users can recommend their favourites to friends, be recommended programmes directly via the app, and discover how compatible their likes and dislikes are.

Hulu
Founded in March 2007, Hulu is an online video service that offers TV shows, movies and clips at Hulu.com and other online destination sites in the US. Hulu says its mission is to “help people find and enjoy the world's premium video content when, where and how they want it”.
Ad revenue comes from the ad impressions generated from Hulu.com, video streams from its distribution partners’ websites and from the embeddable Hulu video player.
Hulu says it has every intention to make its growing content lineup available worldwide “sometime in the future”, but adds there “is no timetable” regarding such expansion.

Fancast
US-only video on demand service Fancast is a division of Comcast Interactive Media, and is popular for its extensive library of current and archival television shows, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Family Guy, The Young and the Restless, and South Park.
As well as offering instant access to TV shows, movies, trailers and clips, it serves up editorial and blog coverage, with in-depth recaps and analysis on the world of television and entertainment.
Unlike Hulu, which hints at plans for overseas expansion, Fancast declares “we do not have the rights to stream content internationally and must limit viewing of full length content to the United States”.

4oD
Launched in November 2006, 4oD allows internet users to stream or download programming shown within the past 30 days on Channel 4, E4 or More4, as well as content from the National Geographic Channel and FX (UK).
As of April 2009, the Flash-based service became fully available to Windows, Mac and Linux users.
Some content is available free of charge, while other programmes and films – including archive programming – is charged 99p per standard programme or £1.99 per film on a per-download basis.
Rights agreements mean 4oD is available only in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

YouTube
Bought by Google for $1.65 billiion in 2006, Flash-based YouTube is video on demand with a difference, because much of the content is user generated – although a deal of it includes movie and TV clips, as well as music videos.
YouTube’s Partnership Program is a revenue-sharing program that allows creators and producers of original content to earn money based on cost-per-impression advertising. Before August 2009, the Program was open only to professional program makers or very popular accounts, but is now open to anyone.
Videos uploaded to YouTube by standard account holders are limited to ten minutes in length and a file size of 2GB. Partner accounts are permitted to upload videos longer than ten minutes.

Vimeo
Vimeo was created by filmmakers and video creators who wanted to share their creative work, along with personal moments of their everyday life. As time went on, like-minded people came to the site and built a community of people with a wide range of video interests.
A year ago the site announced it had surpassed 1 million uploads, and that 10 per cent of these were HD, leading it to claim it was “the world’s largest repository of high-definition video”.
As of March 2009 Vimeo had more than 2 million members and an average of more than 13,000 videos uploaded daily.

Metacafe
Metacafe attracts more than 47 million unique viewers each month, with nearly 11 million of these in the United States. It specializes in short-form original content from new, emerging talents and established Hollywood heavyweights alike.
Metacafe does not allow any video to be posted – only those that “amaze, inspire and make viewers laugh”. This is not a video site for news stories, personal videos or webcam chatter.
In January this year, Metacafe announced content partnerships with NHL, Sony and Warner Music (among others), designed to appeal to 18-34 year-olds, by adding TV, movies, music, sports and video games to the mix.

Veoh
Veoh, launched in 2004, offers free access to TV and film content, independent productions, and user-generated videos, including those from YouTube. Its idea is to turn “the vast universe of Internet video into an easy-to-use, personalized experience”.
Veoh is a open platform for content publishers of all sizes and sophistication “who want to reach tomorrow's television audience”.
Currently more than 100,000 publishers use the service to connect with a global audience of more than 28 million.
In addition, Veoh's publisher optimization program gives publishers tools to help them raise awareness of their content and cultivate viewing audiences.

sevenload
sevenload is a global social media network for Web TV, videos and photos. It was founded in 2005, and its current community is comprised of 20 country portals, with users from around the world watching TV content, music videos and Web TV shows.
It allows users to upload, tag and organize video content, and then share this with other users.
sevenload also positions itself as a provider of cross-media marketing and advertising solutions. Its
business to business services include the development and production of IPTV based internet platforms, media libraries, branded video platforms, as well as online communities based on its core technology.

Tags: business model , content marketing , internet TV , niche marketing , online videos , social video portals , video social media , viral videos , web 2.0

Add comment