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It happened to me too: when video persuades NOT to buy

A few days ago I dropped my iPhone 3GS getting off my car. Just slipped away from my pocket and… woozah. The screen was totally cracked. Luckily I had some tape around to to wrap the thing, and surprisingly, still use it. Now a few days have passed and a friend of mine told me you can get it fixed for about $60. Another one said to look for a screen repair kit for about half the price. That’s when things get interesting.

Can I do this myself? Amazon has this repair kit at $15-20 with fairly good customer ratings. But it’s hard to tell how easy or hard it is to perform the repair. A video would be great. So I keep searching.

Then I find this site, which puts it all in one page - the actual replacement glass, as well as each of the tools you need to execute the screen change yourself. But most important, a video, because I want to know before buying if I can do this myself.

The video is a little slow to start but you get the idea pretty quick. You need tools, you need to be ultra careful, and you need a ton of time. Probably the most discouraging experience I’ve ever had - I just cannot do this. And video persuaded me NOT to buy a product.

If we take a step back, perhaps the most interesting question is “Should a video bringing down conversion rates for a product be taken offline?“. The simple answer is YES, for the obvious reasons. Imagine yourself walking into a meeting where your boss asks you “how’s product X doing in conversions”, and you reply “not well since we added the video”. Not the best scenario.

But if the video is well executed, it probably is worth discouraging non-qualified buyers who will inevitably fail trying to repair their iPhone themselves. Failing costs money (returns) and future sales (negative marketing) - success on the other hand is contagious. That’s how I heard about the kit in the first place.

The HTML5 Video tag, built for SEO

Now that the dust has settled a bit around the issue of Apple not supporting Flash in its mobile products, the SEO community is starting to take a closer look at the benefits of using HTML5 as the delivery method for video. In the last 4 to 6 weeks, I’ve seen a surge in interest for HTML5 video, and not because it’s the only way to play video in an iPad. There seems to be a belief out there that HTML5 is a better way to expose video to search engines - specifically product videos in the case of retailers.

Perhaps the urge to investigate HTML5 comes from the realization that Flash is not the most SEO friendly delivery mechanism for video. We’ve all heard Google can in some cases recognize video wrapped in Flash, but there’s never been any evidence of that being the case. Not to mention that in 99% of the cases on e-commerce sites, Flash video is itself wrapped around a popular JavaScript library called SWFObject for a better user experience and graceful degradation. Not terribly SEO-friendly.

On the other hand HTML5 video tag appears to be built for video SEO, just like the regular HTML image tag is the canonical way to expose images to both users and search engines. Consider the simplicity of this HTML5 video tag:

<video src=”/myvideofolder/videofile.mp4″ controls=”controls”></video>

In which the video source file is directly exposed and easily findable like crawlers, just like images:

<img src=”/myimagefolder/imagefile.jpg”/>

If Google Images offers any indication of how HTML5 video could be indexed in the future, then it is expected that the video source URL itself will play an important role. Video files with URLs like “/running-shoes/new-balance.mp4″ will do better than others like “/myvideos/877732.mp4″. But that’s only one of the dozens of new tricks I expect will emerge in the next 18-months - in what could constitute a small revolution int he SEO world.

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?

Free Webinar Alert: Succeed with Video Commerce in a Down Economy

Justin Foster (Video Commerce Consortium, Liveclicker) and Kevin Ertell (Former EVP at Borders and Tower Records) will be hosting an Video Commerce Webinar on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM PST.

Succeed with Video Commerce in a Down Economy

In this first webinar in a three part series covering how leaders in the e-commerce space use online video to differentiate, create competitive advantage, increase revenues, and cut costs, we’ll cut to the chase and leave you with actionable material to exploit the potential of online video in e-commerce.

In this webinar, we’ll discuss:

- Re-examining core assumptions about the cost and complexity of e-commerce video production, revealing new strategies and insights to help retailers cut costs without sacrificing the revenue potential of online video

- Why extending the reach of online video across many online marketing channels creates additional revenue opportunities, multiplying the effectiveness of video commerce programs

- Several case studies will be shared along with *hard numbers* behind the programs blazing the way forward for video commerce

Whether or not you’re already invested in online video, this webinar series promises to be the most informative, up-to-date source of information you can find to survive and flourish in the fast-evolving field of video commerce.

Sign up link: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/247576387

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