VideoRetailer.org - Exploring the Intersection of Video and e-Commerce.

Expert Panel: Video’s Effect on Web-Commerce and Web-Advertising

I’m off to Denver, where I will be participating to a panel on Video Commerce, moderated by eBags.com Peter Cobb. The panel is described as “Is YouTube becoming commercially disruptive? Is there money to be made on video? Will traditional retailers like Macy’s and Wal-Mart be able to make the leap, as QVC did it on TV?” and will likely be fascinating.

Speakers include Antoine Toffa, CEO of VideoBloom and Barry Soicher, CEO of Adperk.com. I look forward to meeting them both and taking part in this discussion.

Enough Bandwidth for Video Commerce? Yes, but.

As savvy Internet Marketers, are we shooting ourselves in the foot with rich media applications running on our key pages? Is there enough bandwidth out there to support our vision of Video becoming an essential ingredient of ecommerce?

A few weeks back I got a visit from a couple of friends from Uruguay. As dedicated engineers (some would say “geeks”), they connected to their laptops to my local WiFi network to check up on a few things back home. As they were doing this, I was seeing their amazed faces staring at the ping times to Google or Yahoo. 20-25 milliseconds. Sometimes less. Far less than the 200-250ms back there in Montevideo, a fairly Hi-Tech city.

If you’re reading this blog, you are probably part of this American or European Marketing Elite that’s on broadband at home and super-broadband at work. Like you, my YouTube videos play fine without interruption and I don’t mind the extra JavaScript glitz because it comes out instantly for me. But as smart marketers, is it safe to assume that the vast majority of our users are on broadband? Certainly not. Consider this Gartner study, dated July 2008, which estimated the broadband penetration at 55% in the US this year, leaping to only 78% by 2012. Yes, only 78% by 2012.

That’s got to be surprising. I personally never really challenged the assumption that there would be enough broadband for video. In the context of MySpace, and of course YouTube, who would think that so few people had access to fast Internet connections. Looking at the various Video Ad Spend stats (source: eMarketer) we still see a healthy user-base for video viewers (120M+ in the US alone), and solid growth moving forward.

Fine. Then what? Enough broadband for video commerce or not? The answer to this simple question depends on three independent factors: target audience, shopping habits and video delivery process.

1. Target audience. If your commerce site targets an affluent segment of the population, it is safe to assume your user population will be on broadband at home. After all, broadband is almost always sold at a premium over modem connections, and we can therefore expect to find a correlation between household income and Internet connection speed. If you are targeting the college crowd, you probably don’t need to worry about download speed either. This correlation of course isn’t perfect and you should dig out more into your target audience.

2. Online Shopping Habits. In the past recent years a number of very serious studies have concluded that a majority of purchases online were done from the work place, during lunch hours. If you work for a larger company, you may be the victim of drastic anti-YouTube, file-sharing or even shopping policies at work - and you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that the work place is where most people get their shopping and social networking activities done. A gross generalization of my point here would be to say that it doesn’t matter if people have DSL or not at home, as long as they have a job.

3. Video Delivery Process. Finally we’re getting to the most important point in this entire discussion - one that I’m adamant about: how you deliver video. I will share more thoughts on future posts about this, but in the context of this post, how you present video content to your users is going to be hugely important. Let me explain: if I’m on a bad day or simply in a rush to buy something online, and I go to the right product page on the right site, but with a video that’s autoplaying and slowing down the transaction, I’m probably not going to be happy. Video players these days are true bandwidth hogs, they take all the bandwidth that’s available for streaming the content. This competes with the bandwidth that’s required for other page components like navigation, banners, product images, etc.

Instead, I would prefer to be given the choice to play or not play the video, and as long as you don’t slow down the page too much loading a Flash player, I really won’t be that affected by it if I’m on a modem connection or not.

Conclusion. Unless your site sells to a target demographic that has no real options for broadband access, I would not consider bandwidth to be a real issue for deciding to go video or not. Rather, I would pay attention to delivering the video in a way that’s non-intrusive to the user. A delivery method that puts her/him in control of the experience with your site.

8 great commerce video production tips

Holding the camera’s the easy part! Here are some tips to speed up the editing process and increase your video production productivity.

1. Buy a good camera

There are dozens of good cameras available on the market to create your videos. One thing to keep in mind if the fact that videos on your site will typically be 320×240 pixels, which do not require high-definition. However, we recommend buying good camera (HD typically) because they will give you more editing options. Also, try to get a camera with a hard-drive, as opposed to tapes.

2. Use a microphone

Sound is an important part of your videos. You need to use a mike at all times when recording your clips. Wireless or wired mikes typically run under $100. It’s an excellent investment.

3. Prepare what you’re going to say

It’s good to be spontaneous but your imagination and creativity will likely wear off after you have assembled a few videos for your site. Prepare your points ahead of time for each video, and try to be concise when delivering your message.

4. Limit to number of products or points per video

Your viewers have limited attachment span and in general, it’s best to limit sequences to 1 or 2 minutes when filming for eCommerce applications.

5. Starting and stopping the camera

If you are filming product video clips, start filming your anchor a few seconds before she starts talking, then stop a few seconds after she’s done. This will give you some additional editing flexibility down the road.

6. Single-sequence clips work well

When presenting a product you may decide to cut your video clip in two sequences (general frame then zoomed-in), sometimes even more. A highly effective approach that’s been successfully implemented with our clients is to shoot single-sequence clips instead. These are generally shorter, more focused - and it also greatly increases the number of videos you will be able to create a day.

7. Use noise reduction

Even with a good mike you will still need to do some noise reduction on your clips while editing. Adobe Premiere has an excellent Noise Cancelation feature that works perfectly for clearing out all the background noise.

8. Take lots of notes while filming

Another great productivity idea! Write down some basic information about any clip sequence you are filming. Simple notes such as “Keep”, “Delete”, “Not sure if this will work on the site” will save your editors tons of time since in a typical production day you’ll create hundreds of small clips.