Video Valets: An Ecommerce Trend?
Like Vitaman’s Nikki, American Eagle Outfitters is giving a “human” touch to its merchandising. AE has snagged video-blogging vixen iJustine as a spokeswoman for its Spring Break events in Cancun. And you can find her ooh-ing and aah-ing products within an interactive Spring Break packing guide.
Unlike Nikki, iJustine gushes about goodies for both girls and guys when you rollover certain items.
But like the Vitaman valet, she is very enthusiastic in romancing the products:
Guys, trust me. Throw on a polo and a smile and you’ll have every girl’s attention. They’re so great looking and so easy to wear with anything. If you don’t pack some polos, you might as well stay home.
Whether having a human describe products is something customers want to see - I don’t know. Perhaps for high school / college types who’d rather watch the movie than read the book - watching a product description is preferred?
But really, this concept isn’t new. We have the choice to read the newspaper, or watch an attractive anchor read it to us. Why wouldn’t that also apply to ecommerce?
Video is Here to Stay
It certainly takes a lot of time and money to build interactive Flash-based applications. But if you don’t want to go that route, you can still add a human element by adding video content to product pages, like Tiger Direct:
This video sold me on this camcorder, which I purchased immediately along with a bunch of accessories. I found Arno to be knowledgeable, friendly and humorous. Plus this video actually showed me how close you can zoom in with this camera - try describing that with text! With absolutely no background knowledge of camcorders, it really helped to have a virtual salesperson to turn to. Plus it’s nice to refer to the demo to learn how to use the camera when I get it rather than relying on the package black and white insert.
I expect to see a lot more video merchandising (with real people) popping up in the future.
I have been using videos to demonstrate my products on my NetJuggler online store. My store sells Juggling props, and I run one of the jugglers community largest video sharing website (www.juggletube.com).
I have a flash built in module on my NetJuggler website that lets me integrate a video gallery for each article I have in my store directly from juggletube. So take this example of a diabolo : Henrys Diabolo :
I have a photo gallery that people can zoom into to see detail, and I have a video gallery with videos of people using the diabolo. The videos range from world record diabolist to amateur diabolists doing simple and crazy stuff.
Here is a link to demo :
http://www.netjuggler.net/diabolo-henrys-circus-p-5.html
People spend hours on my website watching videos. I have seen an increase in sales since this module has been integrated. It’s still missing a few features and obviously it takes time to get content for every article, but it is worth it.
Note, it’s good to keep videos on a seperate server to avoid slowing down the sales website server…
oh geese, now that you guys showed me that I keep finding more. I think some of this is just ridiculous.
http://www.knickerpicker.com/dressing-room.asp
I can see where it is used for non sex appeal maybe having some benefit but I think these other sites are seeing much more traffic and very few conversions.
I think KnickerPicker is different than the above examples, it serves to show the product in “context” (in use) and is on the right track. Showing items in use are far more effective than static images. Especially on non-model bodies when it’s a non-model customer.
The shortcoming of KnickerPicker is there are still only a couple body types available, and it’s not a great reflection of what it really looks like on.
As with any web 2.0, video/flash should be used where appropriate and with the end result being conversions. But it’s relatively new and experimental, so learning from the experiment may be the value of the exercise.
But videos for product reviews are definetly the thing for the future.