8 Tips to Add Video Before the Holidays
By Dr. Melody King D.M., vice president of sales & marketing, Treepodia

Video can be a huge motivator for people to make a purchase online, not to mention its additional viral marketing potential.

When product videos are available on an e-commerce site, one-third of site visitors will choose to watch them. And according to our figures, customers who view the videos are shown to be 85% more likely to convert, simply because they were given a short video to watch.

With the holidays right around the corner, it's the perfect time to add video to your e-commerce site to steer traffic away from your competitors, improve your site’s stickiness, and see more sales and conversions.

So, how do you do it? Here's some advice on getting started and ensuring your product videos are effective.

Start small.
Particularly if you have thousands of products on your site, start by picking your top sellers – or the products you’ll be promoting the most during the holidays. You can add videos for other products over time, but limiting your focus to the biggest sellers will make it easy to create impactful videos in a short timeframe.

Keep them short: Ideally, your product videos will be less than one minute long, but this can depend on factors such as content, product complexity, and price point. In any case, they should not be longer than 90 seconds.

Use an automated video platform.
Full-production videos can be quite costly and extremely time-intensive to create. By using an automated video platform, you can quickly create hundreds of videos by combining stock photography with music, text, and voice-overs – and start seeing results immediately.

Conduct A/B tests.
Different types of videos perform better for different types of products. You can see which videos perform best for your products by creating and uploading multiple versions of each, and then monitoring click-throughs and purchasing behaviors to determine which version makes the most impact. After a few days, pick the best one and use that one on your site. Consider adding enhancements to improve performance.

There are several ways to enhance your product videos and create more impact, such as:

• Add text. We’ve seen a tremendous lift in click-throughs and conversions simply by adding text to the product videos – particularly if it’s red type.
• Use voice-overs. Voice-overs can be effective in highlighting certain features of a product, or communicating special sales prices or promotions. Additionally, they cater to those among your customers who are auditory learners, who will likely respond positively to this technique.
• Include appropriate background music. This is one area where different methods will vary in performance for different types of products – and where A/B testing will show you what works best. For example, relaxed music for luxury items works well, and high-energy or rock music is great for sports items and casual apparel.
• Incorporate user reviews. User reviews are popular in e-commerce because people tend to trust ratings and recommendations from their peers. If you have user reviews on your site, then it makes sense to add them to your product videos.

Include video in your on-site search results. Research shows that when people search your site rather than simply navigate, they’re two to three times as likely to purchase. By including an icon to denote a video next to or beneath the products in the search results that feature a video, you make it easier for people to find and view them – and increase the likelihood that they’ll buy.

Incorporate video into other marketing campaigns. You can include your product videos in e-mail marketing, social media, and SEO campaigns and greatly improve ROI. For example, put video links directly in email messages, or add video to your Facebook page and upload them to YouTube – which can increase organic search traffic to your site.

Dress up your videos for the holidays. You can create a more engaging, impactful customer experience if you give your videos some special holiday flair – perhaps by adding the sound of jingling bells, showing a wreath-like trim around the edges, or having a little pop-up elf appear with a voice-over about what’s neat about this product.

---Source: i-Merchant Nov. 2, 2009 (www.multichannelmerchant.com). Dr. Melody King D.M. is vice president of sales and marketing at video production company Treepodia (www.treepodia.com).