The Power of Online Video

Americans—and not just kids but that magic 25- to 35-year-old demographic—spend over three hours a month, nose to the screen, basking in its flickering glow. And no, it’s not television. It’s online video, and it’s changing everything.

Once upon a time, online video was the playground of digital media companies and large enterprises with deep pockets and extensive technical resources. Video was an engaging but brutally expensive and fiendishly complicated proposition priced well beyond the reach of most online businesses.

But new tools and services are putting video within the technical and financial reach of every Internet property. E-commerce sites, focused on the holy trinity of traffic, conversion and repeat visitation, would do well to pay attention.

Take Big Plush, for example. The retailer—which makes giant stuffed animals such as seven-foot teddy bears and six-foot gorillas—has a unique market niche. They wanted a way to communicate not just the product, but also the reaction of new toy owners to their giant fuzzy friends. To do this, they built out an entire video “vault” complete with clips of the production process and the reactions of astonished recipients of their oversized toys.

Since so much of giving a stuffed animal is the reaction of the child or loved one who receives it, they were able to sell the most important benefit of the product in a way that would never have been possible with words and photos alone. The result was dramatically increased sales and pass-along, with visitors sharing videos and enticing new customers to experience the product and the brand.

How can e-commerce sites harness online video to drive key business goals? What does it take to create a video presence, and how should publishers leverage a video solution to create traffic, drive sales and increase overall ROI? Here are some rules for getting it right, and putting the power of video to work for you.

Location, Location, Location
There are three places publishers need to think about getting their video assets—the site itself, search engine placement and viral propagation.

Within your site itself, consider the home page, galleries and calls to action. Video on the home page will attract clicks from more than half your users, and can be a great tool to draw visitors deeper into the site. Consider including videos that are instructional in nature, or include a message from the company to introduce a new visitor to the business.

Galleries are another good way to draw users into the site and encourage deeper interaction. Make sure galleries have a means to drive viewers back to a product or purchase, and keep videos short to encourage high completion rates. Make sure to combine videos with a call to action. Videos are incredibly effective in driving user conversion, and should be featured prominently next to products.

When it comes to video, search engines remain one of the great untapped opportunities for traffic generation. Most publishers understand the importance of SEO, but few realize search crawlers are incapable of reading Flash tags, meaning that despite the fact search engines now feature videos in their results, most videos fail to appear. In order to take advantage of SEO opportunities in video, publishers need to submit their video assets via MRSS, a service provided by many video-hosting providers. Since the pool of videos currently indexed is small, this is an opportunity all retailers should explore.

And don’t neglect viral propagation. Viral reposting of video puts your brand, your watermark, your video and a link to your site into locations, blogs, wikis and forums you could never reach on your own. Some publishers see over 50% of their video viewership through viral propagation.

Implementing a video strategy doesn’t have to mean big bucks. Don’t spend your money on expensive, professionally produced video content. Today’s Web visitors are looking for clips that help them understand a product or service, not a lengthy infomercial or short film. Take advantage of the power of today’s digital cameras to produce inexpensive content you can post quickly.

Users themselves can contribute to your video library, helping to increase your content and creating new page views at a minimal cost to the hosting site. Plug-and-play tools allow video uploading directly from within your page, and contests or other promotions help encourage your members to contribute content.

Benjamin Wayne is CEO of Fliqz.