Video Commerce Chronicles Episode 6: Justin Foster’s full keynote at the Video Commerce Summit ‘09
Following our live notes from the Video Commerce Summit presentation from Justin Foster, here is the full length video and the presentation slides.
Video (62 minutes)
Slides from the presentation
Video Commerce Summit: Emerging uses of video in ecommerce
Moderator: Faramarz Farhoodi, Motosport.com
Faramarz remarks:
Strategically analyze the objective of your video program
- Driving traffic to your site (Google Network, Affiliate sites, SEO?)
- Increasing conversion
- Increase average order value
- Increasing page views
- Length of video quite important: under 1 minute, even 30 seconds to avoid distractions - Importance of testing: measure and test conversion
- Misplaced content can hurt conversion
Impact of video on site performance - working with onsite production. Professional resource
- How to videos (how to change tires, change exhaust)
Alison Jeske, drugstore.com
- Affiliate channel is emerging as an important channel to leverage video
- Embedding videos on affiliate site with integrated product merchandising & cross-sell
- Affiliates also commenting on some videos, helping contribute to overall SEO
- Affiliate educating site searchers on how to buy products by clicking on link overlays in videos
- Example of an affiliate gone wild with video: http://www.spreety.com/Fun-Beauty-Infomercials.aspx
- drugstore.com launched first video email campaign in April 2009
- Early results of video in email are promising, but still too early to tell
- Continuing to refine placement for video in email
What’s next?
- Going to continue blowing out video over social media channels e.g. integrating video into Facebook lifestream
- Critically important is bringing video to where the customers are
Goodmail Systems: (Gal Chanoch, VP Product Management)
- Goodmail partnered with AOL, AT&T, BT, Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Road Runner, Telus, Verizon, Yahoo
- Demonstrated video playing in AOL fat client (including full motion and sound)
- CertifiedVideo enables true video in email, no increase in load times or file sizes
- Goodmail AUP forbids auto-play with audio in email, but does enable auto-play without audio
Certona Meyar Sheik
- Seeing personalized video as emerging trend, dynamically serving most relevant video on site pages, and serving different versions of video
- Sees opportunity for behavior-driven merchandising and cross-sell within video
- As the volume of videos continues to increase, important decisions will need to be made regarding whether to continue showing relevant videos, or to drive someone more directly to product pages via product thumbs and other product metadata
Video Commerce Summit: Video SEO Smoke and Mirrors or Real Results, Mark Robertson ReelSEO.com
Video SEO Smoke and Mirrors or Real Results?
Mark Robertson, ReelSEO
Intro
- Shift to search: people search more for the word video more than “god”. Trend
- May 2007 Google Launched video results
- Now, 40% of search results page on Google contain video
- Eyetracking shows that video thumbnails get a lot more attention than regular links
Video SEO overview and strategy
- How does video affect overall SEO. Positive: generate buzz, inbound links, website traffic. Negative: needs to be thought about. Not everybody is a SEO expert
- Video SEO is about best practices. Not a magic bullet
- 2 main strategies: Hosted scenario (on site), posted outside (YouTube, etc)
Hosted scenario (web site video SEO)
- Measure, control the experience, tags, etc.
Posted videos (YouTube, etc)
- Large audience
- Show up multiple times in SERP
- Duplicate content not penalized right now: you can syndicate the same video to mulltiple video sites
Tips for hosted videos:
- Each videos has a central landing page
- Put all the videos in a central location (video.mysite.com)
- Create navigation links to your videos
- Use embedded players better than popups
- Don’t use session IDs in URLs, use relevant keyword in URLs
- Page titles very important, H1 titles too
- Have related text around the video
- Comments
Enabling interaction and sharing
- Let people share on Twitter (comment about Twitter having implemented rel=”nofollow” recently, thereby reducing the value of posting links to Twitter)
- Allow users to subscribe using mRSS
How to get into search engines?
Syndication to YouTube/etc: use services like TubeMogul to upload to multiple sites at once
- titles are extremely important
- try variations in titles - duplicate content
- Descriptive about the video
- Leverage tags
- Put the URL in the start of the description
Future of video search - production quality
Because most engines are working on speech recognition techniques, image and face recognition, make sure to produce in high quality
- Measuring SEO - be patient. Results will take time.
- Use long talk keyword searches
- Resist the urge to copy the description from the manufacturer
- “View” or “Watch”
eBags case study
Video Commerce Summit: Using Video as the Fuel in Your Social Media strategy, Jimmy Healey, Onlineshoes.com
Using Video as the Fuel in Your Social Media strategy
Jimmy Healey, Onlineshoes.com
Onlineshoes.com Seattle-based online retailer - one of the first brick-and-mortar business to go online mid-90’s.
- Online, trying to recreate the traditional experience, online
- Video seeing as the way to bridge between brick-and-mortar and online shopping experience
- Convinced of the value of video, question was about how to start and how to convince the team to do it
Why social media/video?
In this tough economy seeing erosion of other marketing channels, getting more and more expensive to do marketing, like SEM for instance. Sometimes even competing with manufacturers. Margins keep getting squeezed.
- Even channels like email threatened. 3-5 years from now, will people check emails as much (vs MySpace, Facebook)?
- Is how our business is going to be viable in 3-5 years? Social media seen as the long term strategy. Video as acquisition tool (posted on Facebook, Twitter), as conversion tool (Video on site)
History
- Initially started 1.5 years ago as a one-man-show, leveraging past sales experience/athlete runner. Put it on video site onlineshoes.tv
- Now on product pages, carefully picking the products that were revenue and traffic driver for the side. Example Asics GT2140 http://www.onlineshoes.com/productpage.asp?gen=w&pcid=130271 Notice the type of video that’s essentially an animation with photos, audio - because there is limited type to produce. Currently we can produce 300 videos/year.
- Importance of a good call to action on product pages. Went from 0.5% of click-through rates on video (product page) to 5%. Trying to get it be higher. Significant Average order size and conversion rate for people who saw the video.
Question: are you measuring returns? Answer: we’re not in the context of video.
- Point about proving ROI, paying for production and video platform with co-op dollars. Charging manufacturers for shooting the video and playing it
Question: is the appetite higher internally for doing a “viral” video project? Answer: example of Green Day project internally:
- wanted to do a quick video
- asked everybody internally about tips
- within 2H, video was produced, ready to go live next day
link: http://onlineshoes.tv/p/158/12-ways-to-stay-green-in-your-everyday-life/
On contests. Examples
“How do you Dansko” 13,000 views 257 comments, 50 words average comment length
Merill post, 140 comments, 60 words average
- Easy to put in place, gets a ton of UGC
- Following on contests, you can use as ideas for create a spontaneous videos. Example Dansko (using family/friends) http://onlineshoes.tv/p/118/what-does-dansko-mean-to-you/
Video Commerce Summit: No video? No problem! Control Costs with Production and Content Acquisition Strategies
No video? No problem! Control Costs with Production and Content Acquisition Strategies
Moderator: Jed Alpert
Alison Jeske, drugtore.com
John Weaver, FansEdge.com
Wes Pomeroy, RIVR Media
Initial remarks from Jed Alpert
Video is here to stay
When people do their online research, they are twice as likely to get it from retailers
What Webcollage does. Example with ToysRUs. Lift of 6% to 15% in sales with syndicated content on product page from manufacturers.
Wes Pomeroy - RIVR media
9 key cost control consideration
- Productivity: careful planning. By far most essential aspect. How many videos can we shoot in a single day. Techniques we use are about getting as many videos as possible.
- Product size: Example of how small products increase productivity (a watch VS a pair of pants == requires someone to put it on).
- Homogenous product: similarity of products — 10 pair of shoes better than 4 pairs of shoes, 2 pair of socks, 4 jackets.
- Complexity/simplicity: is the additional product quality selling more? Setting is expensive. Rather have a simple video on 10,000 products that a more complex video on 200.
- Leveraging raw footage for multiple videos: also requires planning ahead
- Automation: using motorized turn tables etc
- Camera/Lighting/Software savings
- Outsourcing: key question is how many videos you need to shoot? If you have a sustained amount of volume, you don’t need to outsource. Another issue is inventory management: if your warehouse is located near you, you will not need to ship items for videos. Other items: consider the soft factors (quality?), brand growth (no outsource company will advocate your brand better than you).
John Weaver - Fans Edge
Indie film maker background
- Being and indie film makers taught me to be creating about costs
- Essentially no budget, but using knowledge and creativity you can save and make it happen
- Biggest focus is on product detail page. Management believes we have to get right to revenue. But also do stuff on the about us page, even on YouTube
- On a given day, the goal is to get as many videos done. Planning in advance is the big thing
- Why should you have an in-house producer? Lots of SKUs, and most important, it’s not a static inventory. We do stuff year-round (football, basketball, etc).
- Importance of telling a story (showed video of a Jets helmet with professional players signatures)
- YouTube http://www.youtube.com/fansedge people love sport heros. Fansedge inserts logo on interviews of professional players like Dan Marino. Celebrity attract views
Alison Jeske - drugstore.com
On the beauty.com side
- Focus on original content: focus on unique aspect of an event.
Example: tips and tricks video for butter LONDON http://video.beauty.com/v/1892/butter-london-polish-tips-and-tricks-free-underground/
- Rollercity girls
- Also add other types of content: photo slideshows.
- Sometimes you are surprise by the results of a video http://video.beauty.com/v/1473/prescriptives-all-skins-foundation-makeup/ has 200,000 views on third party web sites
On the drugstore.com side
- Supplier provided content: commercials, product demos, brand stories, customer testimonials
- Customer provided content: contests for customer engagement (video/photo)
- Example of using contest to get engagement (http://drugstore.liveclicker.com/p/159/tell-us-why-your-pet-is-the-best/)
Tags: Add new tag
Video Commerce Summit: Developing a video content strategy, Jason Lohr-Johnson, REI
Initially at REI working in the photo studio, personally doing video on the side. Developed a position about 3 years ago, became video production. We now have 3 people working on video at REI, full time.
History. REI VideoLab mission slightly modified from the REI mission statement: we want to produce video content to inspire, educate, outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventures and stewardship getting our expertise online - and video is the perfect way to do this.
What videos do we want? Listen to partners actively (online partners, merchandizing, email marketing). Set priorities about what we can do, then get started. Importance of brining partners in early (we use video content from manufacturers).
Styles of videos. Three types of videos we make:
1) “outfit” (tell a genuine story). Try to show stuff in use.
2) “educate” example: http://www.rei.com/expertadvice/articles/kayak.html:
- questions/answers
- terminology
- categories of products
- importance of being genuine example: http://www.rei.com/products/786676
Also for education http://www.rei.com/expertadvice/paddling
3) “inspire”
lots of things you can do to inspire people. Example: Testing lab (70 years of history at REI). Showing a video of the test lab at REI.
Production values
Very simple product videos: Buff wear demo http://www.rei.com/product/691367
Salomon water shoe http://www.rei.com/outlet/product/778189
Very successful example of integrating photos and interactive video: http://www.rei.com/features/eVent.html
Question from the audience: how integrated is video on your site? The video center is barely visible, for instance?
It takes time to make video more visible, but we’re working on it 
Live blogging from the Video Commerce Summit: panel - three video commerce strategies revealed
Moderator: Raj Gajwani from Silverdock (unedited notes)
Panelists: Peter Cobb (eBags), Jimmy Healey (OnlineShoes.com), Craig Bokesh (Altrec.com)
1) Question from Raj Gajwani: How did you start with video?
Peter Cobb: 2 years ago recruited a “new media producer” from their photo studio. About 200 videos over 2 years. Product demos, brands creating videos, interviewing suppliers. As highlights, the product demo have been successful. Challenges - what’s funny to some not funny to others. But you got to let people be creative.
Jimmy Healey: 1.5 years. Started as a nice to have to explore. Highlight: just recently started to see tangible effect of product page video on the business. Low point: how long it took us to get here. There are no best practices in this space.
Craig Bokesh: Started in 2005. Didn’t know what we getting ourselves into. Video product product page only. Over time seeing positive return on product pages. Low light: no real negative experiences. Altrec tends to use video for technical/high end product
2) Question from Raj Gajwani: Are any of you using user generated content
Jimmy Healey: we are blending UGC review from PowerReviews into our videos.
3) Raj Gajwani: will UGC be the predominant for in the future?
Peter Cobb: Suppliers have the video, but they use it for sales meeting, but are unaware they can use it for retailer. As far as UGC, quality issues. We are focusing more on our own production and suppliers.
Jimmy Healey: Tend to shy away from manufacturers because we taylor our video for our user demographics. But we are working with manufacturers to capture video content on site. Example of going to Doc Martens being interviewed. Manufacturers recently are becoming more and more excited about video
Craig Bokesh: No UGC. Acquiring assets from manufacturers: trying to work with buyers. Sometimes we take snippets of their videos and include it in our own.
Peter Cobb: Adding one thing: we’re having success with affiliates. Video helps us get our brand on sites (quicksilver videos).
4) Raj Gajwani: any bad experiences with video?
Alison Jeske from drugstore.com: working with outside freelance producer had a execution issues. Big vision, and execution didn’t follow. Footage now sitting on a shelf. Did you guys have similar experiences?
Peter Cobb answers: sometimes with the suppliers you see resistance to get the content produce. Manufacturers want to control too much. Sometimes you just have to do it.
Jimmy Healey: We are running a team with a production manager that’s process oriented and a creative person that’s extremely talented. It’s a great team.
Craig Bokesh: We got better results using a professional TV anchor for our videos.
Comment from REI: Agreed. Huge disparity with people (on-camera personality works much better).
Jimmy Healey: When you have someone on camera, production time is a lot longer. Now we don’t show people and we prefer to have someone do the video voice over. Recruited voice person with an internal contest. 10 people sign up. 3 of them trained voice-over talent. That’s how we recruited. Lots of talent in house.
5) Raj Gajwani: How do you produce video, what’s the cost.
Craig Bokesh: we were able to reduce costs to $200-250 per asset
Jimmy Healey: We made an initial investment, and we have it in the $300-400 range per video asset. Cost heavily offset by co-op
Peter Cobb: at eBags, we have one person who does it all. Just $3000 of equipment. The other cost is IT, although for us we work with Liveclicker.
Craig Bokesh: the co-op component helps offset the cost.
6) Raj Gajwani: Where are technology pain-points in implementing video on your site
Craig Bokesh: we were lucky to have very skilled people on our team. We used an open source Flash player. We have a simple product page implementation. Integration can take a little bit of time. Recommendation: recommending using Youtube for pages with high traffic to support lots of simultaneous videos.
Jimmy Healey: working with Liveclicker on the technical and implementation side and therefore allowed to focus on production and content
Peter Cobb: on the technology side there hasn’t been issues. Problem has been where on the site should the video reside - and fighting for real estate throughout the web site. I think these are the early days of videos and the market is moving to use video everywhere. Feel like we have to move fast and roll it out quickly.
7) Raj Gajwani: Where do you see video going outside of the boundaries of your site? Advertising? Affiliates?
Peter Cobb: I mentioned affiliates earlier, and I think that’s where it’s going. Also think video works great for email. Facebook and Twitter are also obvious places.
Jimmy Healey: Using video as acquisition tool, conversion and retention tool. In the running shoe category we have lots of content and people linking to us, which helps for SEO. We also have a destination site that helps too, onlineshoes.tv. On YouTube, lots of views but very few orders.
Craig Bokesh: Put videos on YouTube and Metacafe. Mixed experiences with that. negatives outweight positives. YouTube has the potential to outrank your own product page. We stopped putting our videos on YouTube. Other challenges on YouTube: comment spam, with outweighs useful product information. I would advise people to be careful with YouTube because overtime it will outrank your own product pages. We had to take some videos off because of this.
Jon Nordmark CEO of Wambo: 2 years ago at eBags we featured a Susan Komen video on the homepage and got pressure from investors. But it was a good way for us to connect with our audience and connect.
Jon question for Jimmy: do you know on PowerReviews how many people upload videos when reviewing?
Jimmy: 0%. No one uploads videos but that’s probably because we don’t promote. With Onlineshoes.tv we capture pictures, videos but most important, comments. So far acquisition of content from users of media content not successful.
Raj Gajwani: Thanks everybody for this great session.
Live blogging from the Video Commerce Summit: Justin Foster keynote
Persuasive video, Justin Foster
1) Intro
Video not just for millenials
30% growth in viewership for online commerce video
Production methods: YouTube, TalkMarket, Animoto, SundaySky, Expo.tv
Great demo of Penguin Boxers showing using TalkMarket technology
Manufacturer content example: dog treadmill video
Video and revenue examples: ShopNBC, Wetseal, ice.com, HSN and Borders (40+% lift in sales)
Ross Simons looking at video from the perspective of reduing returns (returns go down 10%)
2) Persuasive video as the foundation to video commerce
Model from Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford University
Fogg behavior model
X-Axis: Ability
Y-Axis: motivation
Triggering action
- Core motivators: pleasure/pain - hope/fear (hiring somebody for taxes) - acceptance/rejection (for instance in the fashion industry)
Example of a Litter Box
- Simplicity factors (Part of ability)
Time, money, Brain cycles to understand, Physical effort
- Need to have triggers: “buy”, “check out”. Ability to prompt action.
Example of JCPenney.com: model walking and on the right side of the video triggers to buy products. And interactive video.
Question from the audience about performance being a “turn off” (JCPenney demo slow from the Summit)
- Triggers can also be on the product page: example of ShopNBC overlays in the search results page (product, description, video)
CompUSA example of having the player inside the actual product page
Ice.com view video button standing out right below the image
Beauty.com affiliate example
Triggers in email (video GIFs) beauty.com example
Interactive video and hotspotting (Armani Exchange implementation)
3) Creating persuasive video
1. Choose a Behavior to target
2. Find a receptive audience (Where video are displayed: product page, category page, email, social network?)
3. What is preventing the target behavior (Billardex testimonials example)
4. Ensure video fits the context of the channel (right video, wrong place)
5. Find relevant examples of persuasive video (check out your competitors’ web sites)
TEST TEST TEST
Questions from the audience
- What’s the best implementation of video you’ve seen?
(Laughter…) ShopNBC, CompUSA
- What are your thoughts about quantity of video vs quality of video
Start with the top selling products. Highest margin products.
- What is video not good for?
There aren’t products that aren’t fit for video. But there is urgency to get ROI. Therefore think of video on product pages, video in email, video SEO.
Also beware of “viral video”
- Question about educational VS product video
- Do you have examples of sites using UGC?
BeautyChoice.com best example of that. Very cost effective way to acquire content.
The Video Commerce Summit is Here!
I am headed to the first video commerce summit, in Seattle tomorrow June 2nd. This is going to be an exciting event, I will be opening the day with a brief intro then closing with remarks.
Also we will try to capture these sessions on tape. I will likely be blogging the event, if the premises allow WiFi. Here is the agenda for the day (Tuesday):
8:20 Summit Opening Remarks
8:20-9:15 Opening Keynote “Video Commerce: A New Paradigm in Online Shopping”
Justin Foster, Founder, Video Commerce Consortium & Co-Founder, Liveclicker
9:25-10:25 Interactive Panel “From Start to Profit: Three Video Commerce Strategies Revealed”
Jimmy Healey, Sr. Product Manager, OnlineShoes.com
Peter Cobb, Co-Founder & SVP Marketing, eBags.com
Craig Bokesch, Online Marketing Manager, Altrec.com
Moderator: Raj Gajwani, Founder/CEO, Silverdock
10:40-11:40 Featured Speaker “Developing a Winning Video Content Strategy”
Jason Lohr-Johnson, Video Art Director, REI
11:50-12:50 Interactive Panel “No Video? No Problem! Control Costs with Production & Content Acquisition Strategies”
Alison Jeske, Director Product Management, drugstore.com
John Weaver, In-House Video Producer, FansEdge.com
Wes Pomeroy, Director of E-Commerce, RIVR Media Interactive
Moderator: Jed Alpert, VP Marketing, WebCollage
1:30-2:30 Afternoon Keynote “Using Video as the Fuel in Your Social Media Strategy”
Jimmy Healey, Sr. Product Manager, OnlineShoes.com
2:40-3:40 Featured Speaker “Video SEO: Smoke and Mirrors or Real Results?”
Mark Robertson, Online Video Expert & Founder, ReelSEO.com
3:50-4:50 Interactive Panel
“Emerging Uses of Video in E-Commerce”
Jordan Blum, CEO, BeautyChoice.com
Gal Chanoch, VP Product Management, Goodmail Systems
Jimmy Healey, Product Manager, OnlineShoes.com
Moderator: Faramarz Farhoodi, CIO & VP E-Commerce, MotoSport.com
4:50-5:00 Summit Closing Remarks
Xavier Casanova, Founder/CEO, Liveclicker and Blogger, VideoRetailer.org
Europe’s fashion e-retailers jump on the video catwalk
BuyVip is a Europe-based online fashion retailer with virtual outlets in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria and Italy. Access to the catalog and shopping is restricted to registered members only, supported by a member-gets-member scheme that gives discounts to recruiters and new users. I personally haven’t bought from them or any other e-fashion outlet so far since I do prefer brick-and-mortar shopping when it comes to cloth, shoes and accessories but I took a closer look at their catalogue because just recently they have introduced a video-based catalogue. And that did catch my interest.
BuyVIP has upgraded their statical photos catalogue using 10 or less second videos that show a model walking around with the respective piece of cloth. The idea is super-simple! It really hit me when I gave it a second thought: in terms of resources and setting, there is actually no big difference between organizing a photo shooting or a video shooting, especially when the location is a controlled studio environment. Models, studio, lights, camera and a good photographer and/or video professional. Postproduction is probably a bit more time intensive in the case of video editing but the impact and the user experience do change big time. Here two examples of female and male line; to see the video you need to register, though.
In terms of production I think BuyVIP has choosen the right strategy: focus on the product and keep the rest as simple as possible. Nevertheless, I think that the integration into the product site, especially the sharing or bookmarking options could have been much more state-of-the-art. There is only a “e-mail to a friend” option but that’s it.
At BuyVIP currently, not all brands that feature video models; that could mean that the video project is still in a test phase or the roll-out has different phases; but maybe only the top selling or paying brands do actually get their one video catwalk.
Another good European example of how to use video on the product site is the UK-based online fashion store Aseo. As far as I could see, all articles in the cloth section have their own short video. The execution is as simple as the BuyVIP clips but the on-site user experience is way better, offering complementary content around the video, like a size-guide, other accessories to complete your look and a share option with all the most common social network and content sharing sites, from Digg to Facebook.
You might wonder if the share options really matter in terms of lead generation or conversion, sending traffic back to the site. There is little published data about the impact in real business but I would follow the advise of Peter Cobb from eBags - Xavier had a great post + video about them a few weeks ago - where he mentions the importance of video content for social network sites and that being present on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Digg actually did have a positive impact on the brand in general.
It would be interesting to get some real data about the impact of shared content on the traffic to and conversion on site. Can anybody share some info on that?