Businesses have been told for years they need to spruce up their websites with high-quality pictures and other material to increase their sales, but there’s one element that’s becoming more important than ever – videos.
Not only do they give your business a more professional tone – if done correctly and with enough care – but data shows they will actually increase conversions and inquiries.
“Increasing traffic and so on is not just about having transactional websites,” says Viocorp chief executive Ian Gardiner. “It’s about how to get your message across about what you do.”
“That can be a hard task, but that’s where video moves into its own as a tool you can use.”
The data is quite clear Australians are keen video watchers. In fact, 70% of Australians have accessed audio or video content online in the past 12 months, according to Nielsen, and 30% look at online video weekly.
YouTube product manager David King told SmartCompany last year that small businesses need to start looking at the site as an alternative marketing channel.
“There are a lot of smaller to medium-sized businesses which have really operated with a focus of specifically gearing themselves towards publishing on YouTube, and they really make a go of it – and we give them a global audience to do so.”
If you’re not working with video, the evidence is clear – you should be.
The internet has now become a haven for video watchers.
Nowhere else is this more evident than on YouTube. It is by far one of the most popular sites in the world – and has stayed there for years – and Australians flock to it every day for both entertainment and research.
Recent data from ComScore shows 80% of Australian internet users watched video online in October, with each user viewing nearly eight hours each. A total of 961 million videos were watched, and YouTube accounted for 503 million of those.
So what is the attraction? OzHut marketing manager Ivan Lim says users are far more able and willing to share videos than they are text.
“Videos are far more interactive than just text. It’s a form that is much easier for people to share, and people share things a lot more when it’s in video form.”
“Instead of reading long pieces of text, people are now sharing videos, and that’s become one of the main forms of content now.”
Reseo chief executive Chris Thomas says videos are increasingly becoming more important for retail businesses, especially in the fashion industry.
“We really want our clients to start using video. They spend a fortune taking photos, hiring models and so on. But we ask them if anybody thought to take a video of the entire experience, and they say no.”
Thomas says videos are particularly important with fashion – pictures can show a customer how a product looks, but a video will give more information on how a particular piece of clothing actually wears.
“A lot of cameras these days have HD video capability – it’s not a big stretch to get your talent to spin around and show off that product,” he says. “They’re much, much different from just a product description.”
The bottom line, customers feel safer and more comfortable when they’re shown a video of the product they’re about to purchase. It gives them clarity on its weight, quality and feel.
Lim says OzHut has actually recorded a drop in return rates due to using videos. “People don’t feel so unsure about how something works, so people have more realistic expectations about what the actual product is,” he says.
But these experts say not only do videos keep customers comfortable, but they actually increase conversion rates.
“Once someone sees how a product has performed, they tend to be more convinced, and as a result the conversion rate increases. We’ve experienced an increase in inquiries and conversions as a result of using video,” Lim says.
eStore general manager Davin Miller says his company has seen between a 10-30% increase in conversions since adding video tutorials on product pages.
“The data is not exact, but we’ve seen that when we run different products and add video tutorials, we’ll see the conversions are higher when those videos are there.”
Since eStore started using videos two years ago, over 90 have been added with a total of 260,000 views.
“We think it’s better to provide customers with much deeper experience than just reading texts and images. We want to provide a full shopping experience, and we’ve been able to increase our reach far beyond existing customers by being on YouTube.”
So how do you determine what type of videos you should be using?
The consensus is that if you’re in a retail business, you should be adding videos on your product pages alongside keyword-rich descriptions and high-quality photography. These allow the reader instant access to a realistic depiction of how the product moves – not just what it looks like.
One of Australia’s largest online retailers, eStore.com.au, has about 90 product tutorials on its store. An employee sits in front of a camera for two or three minutes, shows off the product and describes some of the features to the viewer. They aren’t comprehensive reviews, but Miller argues they don’t need to be.
“We think it’s a key differentiator for us, and it’s important to improve our product experience. I wouldn’t say they’re on every product, but many.”
OzHut uses videos on its product pages – but it doesn’t make them. Instead, Lim says the company sources videos from manufacturers and puts them alongside the product to save the user the trouble of switching to YouTube anyway.
“These videos aren’t just user-generated content, we take them from the actual source of the product.”
American company Ceilume users YouTube demonstrations to show off its ceiling tile products, and even has a “how-to” section of its site that uses videos as well.
Perhaps one of the best is the new YouTube channel created by fashion label French Connection UK. Users are able to go to the channel itself, and then interact with all the videos that show off different fashion items from that season’s line-up.
All the videos show off different products, with a presenter describing the various benefits of each one. At the end of some videos, interactive buttons allow the user to choose which video they would like to see next.
But the company’s use of video goes far beyond that – it actually integrates eCommerce. When users watch a “Show me how to” video, they can actually click on an item and be taken to the company’s online shopping basket.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
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