EParty Unlimited, an online party supplies retailer operating on a Yahoo Store e-commerce platform, recently deployed thousands of product videos through the Smart Video Platform from Treepodia Ltd., a provider of online video management technology.
“We initially tried to produce some videos in-house, but with 2,500 products in our catalog and very limited resources, we simply couldn’t make it work,” says Jimmy Weng, founder and president of eParty Unlimited. “We also looked into outsourcing the video creation to an external production company but that approach proved to be cost-prohibitive. Once we discovered Treepodia’s automated solution, there was no question that we found our answer. There is no possible way we could have created so many videos ourselves, particularly in such a short timeframe.”
To build videos in the Treepodia system, retailers send product images and descriptions, including customer reviews, via an XML feed to the online Smart Video Platform, which is hosted by the vendor. The final videos show series of product images with features that can include voice-overs, back-ground music and overlaid text, including the retailer’s product descriptions and consumer reviews.
The system also includes built-in A/B testing for determining which videos, and which type of videos, produce the best conversion rates.
A new feature also lets retailers distribute their videos to YouTube and other video-sharing web sites. “We’re starting to use Treepodia’s Video Distributor service to ensure our videos are uploaded to all the popular video-sharing sites, which will help drive more traffic to our product pages,” Weng says.
Comments | 3 Responses
Interesting results. The 'videos' look more like animated banner ads, though. Do you think that once the novelty wears off users will start to ignore them, just like they ignore banner ads today?
Thanks for your note. As we’ve reported before, one of the advantages cited by users of these product videos is that their simple design makes it possible to produce them in large numbers at relatively low cost. And there are significant differences between these product videos and banner ads, as Jimmy Weng, president of eParty Unlimited, tells us. Unlike banner ads, which appear because an advertiser paid to put them there, the product videos require a site visitor to click them on. Weng notes that many of the people who click the videos may already be inclined to purchase the featured product, but that the videos compile several aspects of a product, including images, textual descriptions and customer comments, in a nicer package that helps to finalize a buying decision. Plus, Weng says he gets routine reports from the video management platform that compares the amount of sales from shoppers who click the videos and from those that don’t click them. “We generally see a lift in sales from those who click,” he says. --Paul Demery
Hi Paul, Thank you so much for covering our ecommerce video solutions in you post. It's a great feeling to start the day reading such a wonderful testimonial from a satisfied customer. Earlier today I published a post based on statistics we've collected regarding the impact our video solution has had on the sales of our Fashion Industry clients. In a nutshell it turns out that video increases conversions by a stunning 134% for Fashion Industry retailers. Read more: http://blog.treepodia.com/2010/06/video-increases-conversions-by 134-for-fashion-industry-retailers-q1-2010 All the best, Mike @treepodia
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