Ecommerce Blog

I’m spotting more and more video on ecommerce sites – and many of these are YouTube videos. For example, Ideal Case:

Shoeline.com:

And one of the funniest, Vat19 (yes they sell the 5 lb gummy bear):

Vat19 actually added a video gallery category, you can explore only items with videos.

But have you noticed anything about the above examples?

How about the glaring ad overlay that in some cases links to other retail sites? How about the related videos that distract your customer? Don’t underestimate the power of Youtube to activate CADD (Customer Attention Deficit Disorder)!

Though Youtube is quick and cheap way to include video content on your site, you run the risk of irritating customer with annoying ads, distracting suggested videos and performance issues if Youtube goes down for maintenance. All of this cheapens your brand image and may work against your conversion goals.

Ideal Case and Vat 19 appear to have produced their videos themselves (judging by the video titles and product exclusivity), so my question is why they aren’t using the original, clean videos on their site?

Dylan’s Candy Bar uses another user’s video on its product page for its Time Capsule collection.

In this case, the Youtube video adds whimsical charm to a whimsically charming product that stirs up the feeling of nostalgia. I don’t know how they did it, but somehow Dylan’s Candy Bar managed to embed this Archie comic video without ad overlay and related videos.

Lush leverages its biggest fan, “Allthatglitters21,” on its product pages. Though the video drags on a bit (almost 15 minutes!), you can tell this is an authentic Lush evangelist as she reviews her latest haul.

Though this video originally comes from Allthatglitters21’s Youtube channel, Lush has stripped it of its Youtube skin, making it more clean and professional, avoiding the “cheap” look that a straight embed would. Lush may have reached out to her and obtained the original video file in exchange for free product. Some sites like Blip.tv allow you to download video files directly to your computer.

The takeaway

Youtube carries risks – namely making your site look cheap, annoying or distracting customers. You can mitigate those risks by using your original videos on your site, or asking for the Youtube user’s permission to embed their original video on your site.

You may also like these similar posts:

• Youtube Experimenting With Video Ecommerce
• Adventures in Ecommerce Video: 3 Etailers Share Stories from the Trenches
• Hot Ecommerce Trend: Embedded Video in Email
• Click to Buy Video Providers
• Distilled Clothing Has Innovative Use of Video

Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Om Malik

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Original post by Jennifer Martinez

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Original post by Jennifer Martinez

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Original post by Sebastian Rupley

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Original post by Om Malik

Gary Vaynerchuk’s dad came to the United States with nothing in his pocket. He worked for less than minimum wage and built up a business, Wine Library, that today sells $50 million a year in wine in a sizeable store in New Jersey.

Today Gary is building on top of his dad’s work and is taking the store global with a video show, Wine Library TV, that gets about 100,000 views a show. I remember when I first saw the impact he was having when I walked into a meeting at Revision 3 and the team was sitting around watching his show and drinking the wine he was talking about.

Here we visited Gary’s store and got more of how he’s using the 2010 web to bash in the skulls of his competitors. He calls it “bringing the thunder.” I call it the most innovative marketing I’ve seen on the web to date. We talked about a range of things from his dad to how he would compete with his show, if someone else had done Wine Library TV and he wanted in on the action.

This is part of our Building43 series of videos. Come over and join the community there, we’re looking for people who are fanatical about the 2010 web and who are looking to help other people and businesses get into this new world.

By the way, I’m a huge fan because Gary has never mislead me and he’s very willing to tell a CEO his/her wine is crap to his/her face (I’ve seen him do it, even after the CEO threw us a party).

Hope  you enjoy, tomorrow Rocky (behind the camera producer at Building43) and me are headed to London to find out what’s happening on the other side of the pond with regards to the 2010 web. Join us on Sunday night at a Tweetup in London.

Original post by Robert Scoble

It’s Ironic that Facebook is moving into a more public space occupied by Twitter and FriendFeed.

I think their jealousy of the hype that Twitter is getting might be leading them astray.

Why?

I’ve been asking “normal people” what they use. You know, people like my wife and her friends who aren’t tech bloggers and don’t pride themselves on using the latest thing. She is addicted to Facebook and is not interested in the public part of it. She doesn’t get Twitter and FriendFeed although she understands how I use those to talk with a large public audience.

She’s craving intimacy with her friends. She uses Facebook to talk with her childhood friends about the little moments in life that they will find interesting but that she doesn’t want open to a larger public discussion.

She’s not the only one craving that kind of intimacy. I’ve noticed it about myself too. Recently I started a private group for people I liked that I wanted to have a way to discuss things with just them. It never went anywhere, but I noticed that when we have small, intimate discussions that all of us have more fun and learn more.

Living our lives in public often leads to very weird behavior and worrying about what the crowd will think. That doesn’t lead us to a good place often.

I’ve often wished that FriendFeed and Twitter have more private spaces, or ones that have a better combination of public and private areas. The fact that they haven’t worked much on the private spaces (FriendFeed’s private groups are pretty good, but private messages get lost in the noise and there isn’t a good way to notify people that messages are waiting for them and Twitter’s direct messaging features are a total joke, unusable for anything group related and pretty unusable for anything else either). Now that Facebook is spending more effort becoming more public I find myself looking for some other system that provides that intimacy.

This week I’ll explore several, but one I found that is already gaining a devoted group of passionate fans is ThisMoment. They opened up for business last week.

Unlike with other experiments I’ve done on other social networks this one I’m going to keep just for my family and closest friends, but they have put up some interesting examples that are shared with the public. The founder, Vince Broady, put up a page of his Mad Max movie night. You can see here that the “moment” is intimate and the story told with both text and pictures.

Vince formerly ran Gamespot and entertainment at CNET and Yahoo and he — and a team of 11 loyal engineers — are building out this effort. I always look for good teams behind services (that’s why I got so excited by FriendFeed) and that’s one reason I’m excited about thismoment.

Anyway, some other examples. Even brands can use the more intimate approach. Here Road & Track is using thismoment to share moments of beautiful cars with its fans.

Here Stephen Blake recorded his experiences on Obama’s Inauguration Day.

Am I the only one noticing this trend? Is Facebook nuts for being jealous of Twitter and copying FriendFeed? Where do you go online to talk with your close friends? Are you looking for a better way?

Original post by Robert Scoble

Hey, I’ve learned you gotta write a catchy headline to even have a chance to get attention. Even then, this one will probably barely get noticed in the river of Tweets and other noise rushing by.

But there’s a point here, over on Building43 we’ve been getting around and Adobe showed us Flash running on a set top box with full glorious HDTV. Did you catch that video? Probably not. How will you see sex in the future? HDTV, so the headline sorta fits. And, if you’re here for porn or something, sorry if I fooled you.

In the first couple of weeks we have a bunch of other videos over on Building43 that you might have missed:

Famous author Don Tapscott talks to us about growing up digital. He wrote a book on the topic and you might like his thoughts.

Mark Zuckerberg gives his first video interview in Facebook’s new building and gives his dad, a dentist, business advice.

Stu talks to us about Hadoop and building large dataset search engines.

Are you a famous person or a brand that wants to use Facebook like Oprah and many others do? Caitlin O’Farrell works with celebrities on their Facebook pages and she gives us her best tips.

Four Seasons has 82 hotels worldwide and Kelly Nelson is the first in the chain to get permission to use Twitter and other social networks to represent the brand. Hear her talk about the experience.

Luke Kilpatrick shows us how to create an iPhone mockup in Adobe Fireworks.

You might have heard that Zappos is cool, but after taking the tour you’ve heard nothing until you hear from the CEO in this conversation with Rackspace’s Chairman.

Uservoice is a cool startup in Santa Cruz. Why are they cool? Their service helps companies get closer to their customers. Here you meet the founder and get some insights into what makes UserVoice something that brands are praising.

You’ve probably heard of Fred Wilson if you’ve been on the tech and business blogs. He’s a New York venture capitalist who invested in Twitter, among others. Here he spends 45 minutes with me explaining what he’s seeing happen in the 2010 web world.

If that’s not enough we have blogs from Wes Wilson on branding, Bruce Hughes on small business weapons, Nan Palmero on simplification of technology and the role it plays in business, Michelle McGinnis (she played a huge role in our site’s design) talking about embedding FriendFeed, Michael Sean Wright made a video documentary of our launch party, and Guy Kawasaki talks about the new economics of entrepreneurship.

So, what’s next? Well, Rocky Barbanica is editing up a storm. This week we leave for London to visit a bunch of technology companies to see if we can find ways we can help your web business.

We’re specifically looking for people who can help teach other people about how to do the 2010 web. Are you interested? Please join our Building43 FriendFeed group and leave a note there or, if you want something a little more private, email us at contribute@building43.com

And sorry about the misleading headline, hope you found some sexy videos here anyway. Hey, to me ideas, technology, and geeks are sexy. I’m a geek, what can I say?

Original post by Robert Scoble

Hey, I’ve learned you gotta write a catchy headline to even have a chance to get attention. Even then, this one will probably barely get noticed in the river of Tweets and other noise rushing by. (UPDATE: I changed the headline, cause many people complained about it).

But there’s a point here, over on Building43 we’ve been getting around and Adobe showed us Flash running on a set top box with full glorious HDTV. Did you catch that video? Probably not. How will you see sex in the future? HDTV, so the headline sorta fits. And, if you’re here for porn or something, sorry if I fooled you.

In the first couple of weeks we have a bunch of other videos over on Building43 that you might have missed:

Famous author Don Tapscott talks to us about growing up digital. He wrote a book on the topic and you might like his thoughts.

Mark Zuckerberg gives his first video interview in Facebook’s new building and gives his dad, a dentist, business advice.

Stu talks to us about Hadoop and building large dataset search engines.

Are you a famous person or a brand that wants to use Facebook like Oprah and many others do? Caitlin O’Farrell works with celebrities on their Facebook pages and she gives us her best tips.

Four Seasons has 82 hotels worldwide and Kelly Nelson is the first in the chain to get permission to use Twitter and other social networks to represent the brand. Hear her talk about the experience.

Luke Kilpatrick shows us how to create an iPhone mockup in Adobe Fireworks.

You might have heard that Zappos is cool, but after taking the tour you’ve heard nothing until you hear from the CEO in this conversation with Rackspace’s Chairman.

Uservoice is a cool startup in Santa Cruz. Why are they cool? Their service helps companies get closer to their customers. Here you meet the founder and get some insights into what makes UserVoice something that brands are praising.

You’ve probably heard of Fred Wilson if you’ve been on the tech and business blogs. He’s a New York venture capitalist who invested in Twitter, among others. Here he spends 45 minutes with me explaining what he’s seeing happen in the 2010 web world.

If that’s not enough we have blogs from Wes Wilson on branding, Bruce Hughes on small business weapons, Nan Palmero on simplification of technology and the role it plays in business, Michelle McGinnis (she played a huge role in our site’s design) talking about embedding FriendFeed, Michael Sean Wright made a video documentary of our launch party, and Guy Kawasaki talks about the new economics of entrepreneurship.

So, what’s next? Well, Rocky Barbanica is editing up a storm. This week we leave for London to visit a bunch of technology companies to see if we can find ways we can help your web business.

We’re specifically looking for people who can help teach other people about how to do the 2010 web. Are you interested? Please join our Building43 FriendFeed group and leave a note there or, if you want something a little more private, email us at contribute@building43.com

And sorry about the misleading headline, hope you found some sexy videos here anyway. Hey, to me ideas, technology, and geeks are sexy. I’m a geek, what can I say?

Original post by Robert Scoble

I’m often asked what I think the hottest trend in ecommerce is and I believe it’s video content. So I’m excited to see more new technology emerge that can embed video right into retail email, and retailers experimenting with it. Anna Yeaman reports one retailer boasting a 20-27% click through rate without linking to video, and 51-65% with links to video. And Forrester Research reports video in email can increase click through by 2-3X.

As Mark Brownlow explains in his state-of-play update on video in retail email, early use of video in email was really linking an image of a video to a video hosted on the Web.

Some retailers like Overstock, REI and Sears got clever and converted video to animated gifs. (Hat tip to Chad White of the RetailEmailBlog for these examples). REI uses Liveclicker, but Anna Yeaman has a DIY tutorial on how to convert video to animated gif.

What’s so tough about embedding actual video in email?

Deliverability is the issue. Large video attachments are often a red flag for spam filters, and ISPs (Internet service providers) block “complex data” including Javascript for security reasons.

ISPs have banned Javascript Sending video in an e-mail has been a challenge for deliverability, since large video attachments often alert spam filters. The way that Goodmail gets around this issue is that their e-mail class, called CertifiedEmail, is a paid service that does not go through typical e-mail filters.

How to beat the filters

Last month, email certification company Goodmail launched its video certification project, CertifiedEmail. CertifiedEmail includes a trust stamp which is like a VIP pass through spam filters. Goodmail customers pay a fee to send email with CertifiedEmail, and embedded video will play at Goodmail’s partner ISPs which for now includes AOL, with more ISPs to follow.

The CertifiedEmail service locks down the bit of code that calls the video server, allowing actual video code to live in the email rather than just a placeholder. Target is one of the first companies to sign on with the service.

Google recently announced it would support Youtube links in email for Gmail accounts. It’s not an embed, rather Gmail recognizes Youtube code and displays the video in the email — provided that the Gmail user has enabled the feature through Google Labs. It’s unlikely the average Gmail user is going to turn this on — so don’t get too excited. But it’s possible this will become default in the future.

For now, the animated gif trick seems the most reliable method. CertifiedEmail is promising but needs a few more ISPs on board.

Stay on top of retail email trends

3 great retail email blogs are RetailEmailBlog, StyleCampaign and Email-Marketing-Reports. 2 hot retail video blogs are VCC and Videoretail. I follow these folks to stay in the loop. And do read the entirety of Mark Brownlow’s post Video Email: Current Practices.

You may also like these similar posts:

• Consumers Believe Spam Means Unwanted, Not Unsolicited Email
• How Did Target Miss My Inbox?
• Make Email Look Good In Gmail - 8 Design Tips for Images-Off
• Why Innocent Emails Get Flagged As Spam
• Bloggers Digest - 12/14/2007

Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Om Malik

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Original post by Om Malik

This post is a summary of key takeaways from an Etail 2009 expert panel on online video for ecommerce. Rather than post my notes from the video, I’ve summarized the key takeaways from each of the retailer panelists: Peter Cobbs from eBags, McKay Thomas from BilliardEx and Jimmy Healey from OnlineShoes.com.

First off, big thanks to Xavier Casanova for capturing the entire Etail 2009 session: Optimizing Video on an e-Commerce Site. Xavier’s VideoRetailer.org is an important blog to follow as video is becoming increasingly important for online retail. Ignore video at your own peril!

Email and RSS subscribers, I encourage you to visit this post on Get Elastic to view all the videos embedded in the post, there are a few.

eBags

Presentation

eBags has over 200 videos throughout the site – some on the home page, some on “brand stores,” product detail pages or under the Video tab. Content includes product detail videos and demonstrations, interviews with designers, contests, non-selling pieces like eBags’ Run for the Cure and even a free second day air upgrade explanation video.

Example designer interview, Cinda B

eBags works with Liveclicker which provides this very nice Flash movie player with link and cross-sell overlay, affiliate tools (embeds affiliate link into the video) and other features like the ability to upload a video to multiple SKU product pages, rather than inefficiently attaching video SKU by SKU.

eBags also shows links to products featured in the video including customer ratings on the page:

Production

At first, eBags outsourced its video production but later discovered there was a videography ninja under their noses in the Photoshop department. He was asked to put together a brand video and his work blew everyone away. He is now the videographer.

Videographer Scott Roon and colleague Jason Carncross sat down with Xavier last year to share some of their tricks of the trade. Catch the 10 minute interview with eBags.

Some pieces are shot from scratch and are eBags exclusives, others are sourced from the brands themselves and others are re-worked from what they can get from the brands.

In terms of video quality, eBags suggests you figure out where on the Academy Award vs Youtube continuum you want to be. eBags’ approach is to get something up – it can be polished over time. They are very happy with that, but some brands like Tumi won’t let them do in-house video - they want particular hairstyles, clothing etc. For more polished video, they reached out to a news anchor who wanted to do video on the side. For $100 she produces, directs, films and voice-overs video working with eBags’ videographer which also builds her own portfolio.

Peter Cobb also suggests sourcing talent from local universities. Reach out to professors to find the best of the best to offer internships or free product in exchange for production work. It also helps interns build their portfolio.

Positive Outcomes

• 138% higher conversion rates on product detail pages when a customer clicks on the video
• Significant increase in time on site (measure of engagement)
• Reduced customer complaints. When eBags received a complaint on a product the customer confused about how to assemble, the designer created video the next day. Now eBags emails that video to each one that receives that product

Billiardex

Presentation

BilliardEx has produced several customer testimonial videos — filmed in the customers’ homes, using the product:

They also show step-by-step installation videos showing their actual in-home professional installation service — a key value proposition.

When you land on the home page, you can see snippets of video in the Flash banner (with sound off) which highlights the existence of the videos and creates interest.

When you check out the testimonial page, each of 10 videos shows video length and has a quote/caption that supports various value propositions:

Production

BilliardEx’s philosophy is no one knows your biz better than you. At the very least you should have a hand in script writing and overseeing the production. BilliardEx hired a production company, filmed several customers in their homes with products, and did studio work also. McKay Thomas himself was on-“set” and feels his passion for the product comes through in a way that fully outsourced production couldn’t capture.

One of the difficulties is finding the right mixture of resolution and streamability. BilliardEx’ high end customer wants to see high quality video but not sacrifice streamability. It takes a while to find a good balance between the two.

Positive Outcomes

After adding the installation videos, customer service calls dropped dramatically. Billiardex immediately saw hours and hours freed up for call team, saved money in human resources.

Not all video proved successful. One concept was a 30 second, sexy, in-your-face video on the home page using trick shots with pool balls in attempt to instantly engage customer. People did enjoy it in lab testing but wasn’t part of brand experience so it didn’t work as well on the site.

OnlineShoes.com

Presentation

OnlineShoes.com has various types of video content — category information, brand, product, seasonal trends, brand focused events, how to videos, how to fit certain sizes (Euro sizes etc) and even how to use the site’s newly designed left hand navigation. They also incorporate user generated video like testimonials, product reviews etc. Their strategy is not to create as many videos as possible, rather to create a few videos and really test them out.

Like eBags, OnlineShoes.com uses Liveclicker which you can see in action at OnlineShoes.tv. They also syndicate their videos through widgets.

Production

Jimmy Healey (speaking in the video) himself stars in and produces many of their videos including Arch and pronation explained:

They don’t need a large budget to accomplish good video and response has been positive. Jimmy being a runner himself, the star of the video and also participating in Twitter and Facebook adds to the cohesiveness of their video/social media strategy — creating celebrity out of internal resources.

Positive Outcomes

OnlineShoes is dedicated to testing different video content. One test for a particular pair of shoes that sells 7 figures annually saw a 19% increase in conversion and 20% increase in revenue with video.

Is Video the Hottest Ecommerce Trend of 2009?

I was asked a while back what I believed to be the ecommerce trend to watch and I definitely believe it’s video. Not only does it enrich the shopping experience and reduce the fears, uncertainties, doubts and dealbreakers customers have about products and transacting online — it also has that social appeal - video content can be found in search engines, Youtube search, syndicated through widgets etc. These retailers demonstrate that you don’t have to have a million dollar budget to get video up on your site, and it can pay off tremendously.

You may also like these similar posts:

• Youtube Experimenting With Video Ecommerce
• Click to Buy Video Providers
• Distilled Clothing Has Innovative Use of Video
• PPC Split Testing: Reducing Risk When Testing New Ads Against Control
• Ecommerce Innovation: Videos That Sell

Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Robert Scoble