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

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 Consortium Issues Its First Whitepaper

Earlier today the Video Commerce Consortium published its first white paper, entitled Building an Effective Video Commerce Strategy. As a member of the VCC, I got a chance to review the document shortly before publishing and was impressed with the depth of analysis. Well written and document, this paper is the first of its kind to describe the nascent Video Commerce industry and provide a methodical framework for starting a video commerce program. Using examples from ShopNBC, Circuit City or Wetseal, Justin Foster does an excellent job of building a business case for eCommerce video.

The idea behind Foster’s business case is to project positive ROI numbers from top retail sites onto an existing retail site seeking to deploy video, with a top-to-bottom approach that aims at concentrating the initial video effort on high margin, high volume products. One of the central thesis of the document is the need for a three-prong strategy that harnesses the power of video to increase onsite conversion rates, acquire users outside of the traditional ecommerce boundaries, and build a lively community of users. This is arguably a solid and generous contribution to the video commerce space. Here embedded the full document you may obtain from the original white paper link.

Building an Effective Video Commerce Strategy - Get more Business Plans

ShopNBC’s Video Commerce Endeavor Is Inspiring

When Justin Foster from the Video Commerce Consortium talked about ShopNBC’s video commerce experiments at Streaming Media West last fall, many of us were impressed by the vision and commitment from a company that’s been competing for years against the Home Shopping Network and QVC, but somewhat trailing behind. True, HSN and QVC still retain the lead in terms for marketshare and brand awareness, but ShopNBC.tv has taken a clear lead in the nascent video commerce space with a site that’s designed as an entirely new channel.

It’s not hard to find ShopNBC.tv. Personally, I’m seeing the ads popping all over the place on the internet, like this prominent and wide banner on WebWorkerDaily, one of my favorite blogs.

The site itself has been carefully built as a new destination site, using Flash as the presentation layer. After landing on it, you are immediately taken into the video experience, since it’s streaming the TV content live, without needing to install or activate anything. Yes my friends, the homepage is boldly featuring live video content, which is sort of a powerful statement: this is video, this is ShopNBC.tv.

The navigation on the site is innovative too. Unlike many ecommerce destinations nowadays, which feature countless links to site sections, departments, brands, etc, ShopNBC.tv is betting on a simplified shopping experience with simple yet intuitive rollover menus that allow you to shop by category, brand or host. The search is also elegantly designed and consistent with other elements on this page. Also impressive the fact that the video never stops playing, all navigational content is overlayed right on the page without any interruption.

Interesting also what happens when the user is ready to buy a product - as the click button is redirecting the user to the ultra-elaborate ShopNBC.com, and the most seamless fashion.

On the critical side, the biggest concern would be the extensive use of Flash, which limits SEO visibility and linking (everything happens under the same URL). Another limitation, which I am sure will be overcome soon, is the lack of social media features which would enable sharing across blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.Nevertheless, what an amazing shopping experience. ShopNBC.tv will no doubt be the benchmark for many video retailers moving forward:

1. ShopNBC.tv was designed as a new destination site, with its own identity and user experience.

2. ShopNBC.tv is a true video shopping site. Video is the center of the shopping experience, and ShopNBC.tv doesn’t make any excuses about it.

3. ShopNBC.tv is the innovator to follow. We are not aware of any similar project in the industry that marries video and commerce so well.

Full video: Video Commerce - Selling online with Video at Streaming Media West

StreamingMedia.com just published the entire Streaming Media West 2008 conference content, including the session on Video Commerce, with participants from the Video Commerce Consortium, drugstore.com and eBags.com.

After the conference I also conducted a number of interviews that will be available on VideoRetailer.org shortly.

Video Commerce presentation at Streaming Media West

These are the slides that can be download from the Streaming Media West panel, “Video Commerce: Selling Online with Video”. The panel took place September 24th 2008. Thanks to Dan Rayburn for organizing this great event.

Here is the transcript -Slide 1: Justin Foster, Founder, Video Commerce Consortium Alison Jeske, Director Product Management, drugstore.com Jon Nordmark, Founder & CEO, Ebags.com Xavier Casanova, Founder & CEO, Liveclicker

Slide 2: Video Commerce ShopNBC.tv launches Social Marketing Friendster founded Search Engine Marketing - CPC Overture first $100M revenue Email Marketing - CPM Digital Impact first email Affiliate marketing - CPA Commission Junction formed Banner advertising - CPM DoubleClick - first banner open to all first visitor bankrupt first profit founded $1M web sales Will It Blend video IPO viewed 100M times eCom sales 1% eCom sales 4.2% of total retail of retail 1994 1996 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

Slide 3: “Will It Blend” over ~100MM views and counting

Slide 4: Self-Produced Videos: build credibility, add value, humanize the experience

Slide 5: Acquire content from customers Build a trust relationship

Slide 6: Q: What is preventing Don’t know where to start you from starting out Lack of knowledge with video commerce Unproven ROI Lack of resources or expanding your Lack of industry case studies current video No executive buy-in commerce initiatives? None of the above Lack of interest Poor ROI High production costs Goes against the culture or brand 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% Source: Video Commerce Consortium Survey. July 7, 2008

Slide 8: Alison Jeske drugstore.com, inc. With a decade of experience in (NASDAQ:DSCM) is a eCommerce, Alison Jeske has leading online retailer of health, worked in customer acquisition, beauty, vision and pharmacy retention and customer service products. Our portfolio of brands aspects for online retailers. include: drugstore.com™, Alison is currently Director of Beauty.com™ and Product Management for VisionDirect.com™. All are drugstore.com, inc., where she accessible from is responsible for defining site http://www.drugstore.com and strategy, and implementing new provide a convenient, private, site features to deliver an and informative shopping exceptional personalized experience while offering a wide shopping experience. assortment of more than 30,000 Prior to joining drugstore.com products at competitive prices. Jeske was a senior member of the eCommerce team at Cingular and AT&T Wireless.

Slide 9: Past : Launch of new Beauty.com site in November 2007 – included video ▪ Video library (self-produced and vendor videos) ▪ Brand boutique videos (e.g. Jonathan) ▪ Objectives: - Increase basket size - Increase time on site - Provide enhanced shopping experience for prestige beauty customers ▪ What did we achieve?  Basket size and time on site difficult to directly correlate to video viewing (new features also launched w/ new site)  Positive feedback from customers 9

Slide 10: Pop up window displays video

Slide 11: Present: New tools and expansion of video into drugstore.com ▪ Partnered with Liveclicker to provide rich tools for driving that intersection of video and commerce ▪ Launched Beauty.com w/ Liveclicker in July ▪ Launched drugstore.com in September ▪ Monitoring SEO benefits ▪ Building out a video library ▪ Securing content from vendors ▪ Adding video into our product setup procedures ▪ Measure, measure, measure – analyze!

Slide 12: Liveclicker tool provides many features: - ’Buy’ just one click away - Product links in video - Sharing - Rating of videos - Comments - Access to related videos/whole library - SEO benefits - Push to YouTube, Twitter, Google Video

Slide 13: Over 30 videos on Beauty.com Still early to determine the basket (order value) impacts

Slide 14: Other exciting metrics – newest video with a 94% continue to watch past 10 sec mark; 42.5% watch whole video

Slide 16: Future: - Broaden access to video throughout the site (product details pages; tutorials on new site features) - Develop in-house videos (videos for our “brand”) - Facility for customers to upload video - Continue to monitor and analyze results (orders!)

Slide 18: Jon Nordmark, Founder & CEO Ebags.com >$100MM 2007 revenues Growing 25%+ annually Launched video in early 2008 - Initial pilot on video site - Later rollout to brand and product pages on Ebags.com

Slide 19: Put existing assets to use The most engaging medium for selling Provide a richer customer experience Drive new traffic through video SEO

Slide 20: Leverage supplier content Access professional quality assets; low cost

Slide 21: Group A – No Video Group B – With Video # Product pages 25,000 25,000 served Conversion rate 6.63% 10.00% (clicked play button) Conversion rate 6.63% 15.84%(watched entire video) Conversion rate 50.1% increase N/A (clicked play button) Conversion rate N/A 138.9% increase (watched entire video)

Slide 22: Launched in 2008 “ Conversion rates increased. Prominent SEO placement Plus, we quickly validated the SEO pilot.” - Jon Nordmark, Founder & CEO, eBags.com

Slide 23: Future: - Continue producing video assets - More experimentation testing “demonstration” vs. “promotional” - Lean on suppliers and customers for new video content

Slide 25: Largest and fastest-growing consortium of interactive marketers seeking to learn about and advance the use of video in e-commerce www.video-commerce.org

Slide 26: Justin Foster, Founder, Video Commerce Consortium Alison Jeske, Director Product Marketing, drugstore.com Jon Nordmark, Founder & CEO, Ebags.com Xavier Casanova, Founder & CEO, Liveclicker

Justin Foster launches the Video Commerce Consortium

Internet Marketer and Video Commerce expert Justin Foster recently started a forum discussion called the Video Commerce Consortium (video-commerce.org). Thus far, the group has gathered an impressive list of retailers of all sizes and industries - Best Buy, Eddie Bauer, Adobe, Hallmark, etc. Similar to the email roundtable, a forum Foster started a few years ago, the group is hosted as a Yahoo group and members can ask questions and get advice from industry peers. Membership is open to all, and free. Foster will also be moderating an expert panel at Streaming Media West September 24th 2008, Video Commerce: Selling Online with Video with Alison Jeske, Director of product management at drugstore.com, Jon Nordmark, Founder and CEO of eBags.com and Lonny Paul, director of e-commerce at CompUSA.