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

HTML5 Webinar by ReelSEO

By now everyone knows that HTML5 will have a video tag built into it allowing you to place video online without the need for an external player. But our friends at ReelSEO have scored a major win and put together two major powers in the online video player arena, Jeroen “JW” Wijering and the Opera browser’s HTML5 video core developer, Philip Jagenstedt. It’s happening next week, July 21st at 11am Pacific.

There you will have a chance to ask questions about the various html5 video codecs (webM, Ogg, H.264), browsers that support HTML5, advantages, disadvantages, the future of HTML5 video, and more.

Register Now for this FREE webinar

2010: not without video marketing (Part 2.)

Part 2 of what I think will be happening in the field of video marketing in 2010.

6. Live streaming and live video presentations online.

• Live streaming of company’s events and online product launches will become part of digital marketing and communication strategies.

7. Video SEM and SEO will become relevant disciplines.

• This year marketers will discover the relevance of video SEM and SEO as part of their overall strategy since video contents helps to get better page rankings results.

8.  Evolution of video user experience.

• We will see an evolution of what we called “player”, video content will be integrated naturally into websites, optimizing navigation and user experience. (PD: check out my next post here).

9. Widgets, widgets, widgets.

• Widgets will help make video content more attractive for e-retailers, helping to push conversion rates. Check out the tools offered by Qoof (just to name one) for example.

10. Video and mobile marketing.

• Although a few weeks ago I predicted that the 2010 won’t be the year of mobile video commerce - mainly due to technical problems and the lack of generally adopted mobile payment platforms - I think we will talk a lot about it and hopefully see some leaps forward. Especially now that Google (= YouTube, which is converting into a video based transactional shopping site) has its own device and many programmers waiting to create apps for the Android platform.

Video hosts can help focus a shopper’s attention

I have been noticing that more sites have started to use an interesting form of online video known utilizing a “video host” or “video spokesperson.” This type of video is often presented as an overlay on a web site that appears when when you first enter a site or hit a landing page. When implemented well, a video spokesperson does not interfere with the normal operation or navigation of a site. Typical applications for a video host are site advertising and promotions, how-to or training videos, issue management or recruitment over the web.

First I was a sceptical because I thought it was an intrusive element in terms of user experience but looking for sites that use them I found some really well implemented examples, like this one from a Youth Sports site called We Play.

The site is hosted by baseball pro LeBron James who helps the first-time user to quickly find out about the main content and services by directing the user to the principal sections of the page. His intro ends with a call-to-action: “Join now, it’s free.”

The University of Dalhousie in Canada uses a host to promote the services of the institute’s career center to future students and alumni.

And at Barnes & Noble’s online shop, new releases are brought to the user’s attention using a short overlay promo video featuring the book author.

There is no doubt that this kind of dynamic video application can help to drive conversion rate of website or landing page. But in order to guarantee a good user experience it must be used at the right time, in the right place and above all give the user control over the video. The user must be able to stop and click away at any time while navigating the site.

So I think that a video spokesperson is only useful if …
1. …it helps the user to find his way around the site. Avoid simple welcome messages that don’t deliver any additional value for the user experience.

2. …it uses a person that relates naturally with your brand or product.

3. …the clip is related to a call-to-action or promotion that justifies the presence of an extra layer of navigation.

When will YouTube be a transactional video shopping site?

This week, eMarketer cites a study by InternetRetailer which reveales that already 41.4% of all Top 500 online retailers are present on YouTube. That’s the second most used social site after Facebook where more than 57% of retailers are trying to do business.

So far social networking sites have been seen by many retailers as part of a multiple-points-of-entry strategy to the e-commerce site. That’s where we wanted to attract the traffic to because that’s where the user is less distracted by other offers. At least, that used to be the common belief. But the article points out an interesting fact that will make us rethink this “single- point-of transaction” strategy” again, especially for those retailers using video for selling.

Shopping is (and always was) a social act, so it’s common sense to let people shop among their friends at their favourite social networking sites.  That’s why forward-thinking retailers want to bring their Web stores to the environments where their customers like to spend time. As a result, almost three-quarters of the merchants in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide have a presence on at least one of the major social networks or social shopping sites.

I think in the future we will have to think much harder about how to integrate the transaction into the video content or player in order to reduce clicks and make online shopping an even better user experience - even if that means that customers don’t drop by our shopping site. Let’s see how long it takes YouTube and other social network and video sharing sites to become transactional.

Video Email Marketing Webinar: “Video Email Marketing in 2009″

Date: August 12, 2009

Time: 11:00AM Pacific / 2:00PM Eastern

Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/688801731

Description: For years, email marketers were told it was impossible to include video in their outbound email campaigns. Those who tried often encountered ISP delivery blocks or rendering issues as ISP email administrators began clamping down on Javascript and Flash in email due to potential security issues. As a result, embedding video in email remained a pipe dream for email marketers.

The longstanding best practice used as a workaround was to embed a static image in the email, with a “play” button overlaid to indicate a video was viewable on the campaign landing page, once the subscriber clicked through the email. Even today, we still see articles like this one preaching the merits of this method of video in email. There’s only one problem - it’s not video in email. It merely suggests video exists, but nothing actually plays in the email at all.

Today, email marketers no longer have to settle for this best practice and the pat answer that video in email simply doesn’t work.  Two new industry innovations have changed the game of video in email, and email marketers are beginning to experiment once again now that the spam issue can be avoided - at least for those who know what they’re doing and plan ahead.  Lest you get too excited and start going willy-nilly embedding your videos in email campaigns upon reading this blog post, it’s worth noting that major limitations still exist with regard to video in email.  To use an automotive analogy: if you expect to find the holy grail of achieving universal video in email (across all email clients, and across all ISPs), you might just have to settle for a nice, practical Toyota Corolla for now and leave the Ferrari on the showroom floor most of the time with the exception of the occasional joy ride around the dealer parking lot.

This webinar will get into the details of how email marketers are achieving video in email today, while highlighting innovations in research and development that are driving the push for universal video in email adoption tomorrow.  We’ll also highlight the limitations of video in email in considerable detail, and share best practices for achieving workable video in email by following some important best practices.  Attendees will learn:

- How to showcase video in email across 80% of your subscriber list, without triggering spam filters

- The limitations of video in email, including breakdown by email client and ISP

- The role of video certification services, and what can (and can’t) be done with these services

- Why email marketers who seek to include video in email will need to learn about bandwidth maintenance, video compression, and “designing for the exception” when including video in email marketing campaigns

- The impact of video on the subscriber experience, and how to design for the optimal experience without distracting or annoying your list members

The webinar is hosted by Justin Foster, Founder of the Video Commerce Consortium, Co-Founder of Liveclicker, and Founder of the Email Marketing Roundtable.  He’s joined by Lisa Harmon, Principal and Co-Founder of Smith-Harmon, Chair of the User Experience Roundtable at the Email Experience Council, and President of the Email Marketing Roundtable.  You can learn more about the webinar and register here.

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: 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: 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 Ad is the Content

By suggesting that “the ad is the content” during a private conversation at AdTech, Darius Abbassi (Director of eCommerce for MotoSport) perfectly summarized what many video commerce professionals are starting to learn from their campaigns and web analytics reports. Darius articulated this concept for me as general marketing strategy, essentially arguing that shoppers are becoming immune to traditional marketing tactics and make purchasing on content sites. Naturally, we should ask ourselves the same question about video commerce. What types of content work, and doesn’t work. Is a video commerce clip an ad? Or a piece of content?

Let’s think about TV commercials for a moment. Who doesn’t get irritated by the shear amount of advertising that’s invaded our television channels? TV commercials are invasive and most of the times, irrelevant. The Web is supposed to solve this problem, by allowing the user to ignore ads easily, scroll down or simply click away. And because of its measurability, online advertising actually doesn’t leave much room for poor quality advertising. This is why you rarely see TV commercials running on sites as standalone banners. They just don’t work. True, pre-roll and post-roll still allow these type of commercials to exist online, but let’s be honest - who wants to watch a commercial? Whether it’s pre-roll or post-roll, TV ads are an annoyance online.

Online Merchandisers sometimes misinterpret the value of video for e-commerce, thinking that product pages are going to be invaded with TV commercials and high level marketing messages. We can’t blame them – many brands and suppliers are pushing them to reuse the video clips they’ve produced for the television. Clearly, the right approach for persuading prospects to buy products is to use short, well-scripted product videos that add value to the purchasing decision process. They have to show products in a way that’s simply impossible to put into words or photos. They have to be directly relevant to the product that’s been viewed, and yes, they need to be short and to the point to convince a hesitant prospect to make a purchase.

When videos are created with the simple and noble goal to honestly explain, demonstrate or showcase a product, not only can they be used as a conversion machine on product pages, but also as a powerful lead generation tool outside of an e-commerce site. The content is the ad, the ad the content.

Qoof - a savvy blend of video, portable widgets and instant communication

A few weeks ago, during a webinar on video commerce, Kevin Ertell exposed some interesting ideas on the future of online retail, pointing out to the emergence of distributed shopping. Kevin told the story of how Tower Records was making significant money selling CDs and music products at local concerts - from a simple table stand with just a couple of employees. He then drew a parallel with the online world, outlining his vision for decentralized shopping experiences where users can browse and buy products from their community site via widgets.

In the context of video, Qoof is certainly an interesting implementation of a shopping widget. Both a video production and technology company based in Los Angeles (CA) Qoof actually goes as far as defining its widget as “a video commerce platform”, since video is at the core of the solution. Arguably, the Qoof widget features some unique communication tools (Instant messaging and Skype) which enable real-time communications with an actual sales person. You can see the widget in action on the Paragon Sports homepage:

Qoof is also working on its own network of publishers, and recently launched ShopOnAir, its online video shopping channel. Featuring content from established retailers such as Buy.com or Dell, Qoof is acting as an affiliate publisher for them. This larger version of the Qoof widget may also be embed on an eCommerce site.

Jonathan Stefansky, recently named CEO of Qoof, does a nice job outlining the features and benefits of Qoof at the Affiliate Summit 2008: