After spending all day shooting product videos and increasing conversion rates for online retailers, we Invodians need a little respite from such arduous work. Therefore, the other day we congregated at Austin’s Shuck Shack and put down some shrimp and Lone Stars. For companies out there searching for fun ideas or product videos…. Invodo is your eCommerce video and fun solution!

One of the things that differentiates eCommerce video from those old-fashioned things called television commercials (remember them?) is a tone of trustworthiness.

Consider the trust index below from today’s eMarketer. Friends and family top the list – no surprise, and a good reason to include social marketing as part of the mix. But when it comes to placing eCommerce video on product pages to drive conversion, you simply can’t include everyone’s friends and family.

At the bottom of the list are television presenters and celebrities. (We suspect that animated slide show “product videos” would rank even lower).  If you use television-commercial techniques or celebrity endorsements as part of your eCommerce video strategy, you’re using the least trustworthy tone and presentation. A store assistant, according to the chart below, is rated as 30% more trustworthy than a TV pitchman or celebrity.

So stop putting off launching an eCommerce video initiative because talent is a barrier. It’s not. You don’t need Tiger Woods to demo your products. The talent you have – your product managers, your best sales reps, your business managers – will build trust more effectively than any celebrity could. eCommerce video is about driving conversion. This is one course where you have it in you to outdrive Tiger Woods.

We are rapidly turning Craig into a blogger! In addition to blogging here, he’ll contribute posts regularly to the Video Commerce Consortium blog. The VCC’s mission is advance the use of video in eCommerce, placing them on the vanguard of thought leadership in the space. Craig’s first VCC post is up, focusing on the economic aspects (specifically, “who pays”) of video commerce.  Many thanks to Justin Foster and the VCC for inviting us to join the conversation!

The title pretty much sums it up.

The way to make effective eCommerce video that online users will watch is to keep them simple, short, and informative. Jason Kincaid of TechCrunch recently wrote, “The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do.”  Because most information hunters are quite lazy, especially consumers, it is hard for companies to convey their entire value proposition through just text.

Therefore, why write what you do when you can show it through video!  Video has far more advantages than a block of copy.  If done correctly, video can be interactive, engaging, serve as an additional branding opportunity, and better convey a message that could take 5 pages of text to communicate.  And let’s be honest….. who is going to visit a website and read 5 pages vs. watch a video?

In order to jump the “lazy hurdle” and break through online noise, companies and brands should utilize video to educate and engage their audiences.  As Invodo has previously defined here, eCommerce video is the ideal tool for brands to use to explain their products to consumers and increase online sales.  Sure, eCommerce video might not have all the glitz and glamour that highly produced commercial content does, but that is what makes them work.  Consumers don’t want to be sold to, they want to be informed.

To be effective, utilize eCommerce video that is authentic and feature focused and stick it on a product description page!  You inform the consumer at the point of purchase therefore selling to them under the guise of a thoughtful and nice manufacturer who was so kind to put up such a beneficial video.

If you K.I.S.S. and place videos in the appropriate location, you will be able to fully utilize the power of video.   Check out how Invodo can help and be a complete video solution for both manufacturers and retailers.

The Invodo blog has been bringing you news and entertainment for the last 18 months, and I’ve finally been able to convince our marketing team to let me join the fun.  I’ll be blogging about business in general, video specifically, along with whatever pops into my mind.

Since this is my first post, I’m going to write about why I first decided to join Invodo at the beginning of the year.    I’ve always been interested in how the internet and technology are changing the way people find, learn about, and ultimately buy products.  This curiosity is what led me to jump into the internet in the first place when I joined GoTo.com back in the nineties – - for those of you who don’t know, GoTo invented paid search and Google later copied the model to make billions!

Anyway, the point is that the internet is enabling businesses to constantly improve the way products are marketed to consumers.  Video enables companies to take this to an entirely new level.  With video, businesses are able to provide a knowledgeable, virtual sales person right when the consumer needs it …. on the product page when he or she is deciding whether or not to put the product in the shopping cart.  Just imagine how great life would be if you never had to search for help at a Home Depot store because someone was with you ever step of the way!

So when I learned about Invodo and how it was bringing product videos to online retailers, I knew this was a company that would provide tremendous value to manufacturers and the online retailers who sell their products.   With typical online sales conversion rates of 1-3%, every tenth of a percentage point increase is gold to retailers.  And I saw Invodo as a company that would enable manufacturers and retailers to mine the gold.  That’s why I joined Invodo!