Increase Online Sales With Video

Product Websites Should Use Video to Get More Sales

If you have a website that sells products, then including a video of the product can really increase sales/conversions. It's really easy today to create a demo video or how-to video of your product. You don't need fancy equipment and editing is simple - you can even edit video on an iPad today.

Here's a good article about how including videos on your product pages can increase sales (it is talking about a report that's available for $400):

170 Ways to Improve Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate (searchenginewatch.com)

They’ll also provide you other stats that will help you decide if you should invest the resources to get this tip done. As in the case of why your product pages need video they share:

• Using video demos of items on product pages increased sales for Zappos by between 6% and 30%.
• Shoppers who viewed video on Stacks and Stacks product pages were 144% more likely to add to cart than other shoppers.
• On Ice.com, the conversion rate for shoppers viewing video on product pages increased by 400%, while return rates dropped from 12% to 9%.
• Shoeline.com improved the conversion rate by 44% for product pages containing videos.

The cool thing is that you make the video once and it keeps on selling for you! It's simply a no-brainer.

Since I majored in video production in college, here are a few quick tips for shooting video:

1. Prepare a script. It can even be just a brief outline. Make sure you cover the main points that you want to.
2. Practice the script. Do a little rehearsal.
3. Make sure you have good, even lighting. Don't mix indoor light and outdoor light together. Use a 3-point lighting set up.
4. Make sure you have good audio. The microphone on the camera might not be good enough. It could catch too much other noise. Your best bet is to use a lapel microphone. A wireless lapel mic is probably your best choice. Check sound levels with headphones.
5. I'd suggest shooting in HD if you can. It's the preferred format now and it'll look good. You want to showcase your products as best you can.
6. If you're good at editing, then plan your shots. One static, non-moving shot that doesn't change is boring. Either move the camera around (a steadicam is recommended) or do a cut to a close up of the product as it's being demonstrated.
7. Do not get too fancy with editing. You may be tempted to do all kids of crazy wipes but fight that urge and use simple cuts and fades. Otherwise, you'll be bringing too much attention to the video itself instead of the product.
8. If you plan on creating several videos, then get a professionally made intro and out-tro (ending) made. You can do that cheaply using people's gigs on Fiver.com.

Putting Video on Your Website

The next step is to get that video on our website. There are a few ways to do this. What you want to avoid is using Flash video or video that requires a player like Windows Media Player or Quicktime. That's the old way of doing things and there are better ways now. This is important because so many people are using mobile devices like smart phones and tables. Devices like iPhone and iPads can't play back Flash video and you want to make sure people with those devices can see your videos.

The two main ways to put video on your website are to either use YouTube or HTML5 video:

• With YouTube, you're not paying for bandwidth and you get extra traffic to your website from people browsing YouTube. It's a great way to go for sure.
• With HTML5 video, it has to be encoded correctly and then you will be hosting the video on your website, which means you will be paying for the bandwidth.

If you need help getting video onto your website or on your shopping cart pages, please contact Webstix and we'll be glad to help you.

-Tony