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.