“The Day the video was put live on my website I received more phonecalls”
Tony Kingham – Essex Bathrooms
Now, more than ever, companies of all sizes have to make sure we spend our marketing budgets efficiently and smartly. Websites must be optimised, campaigns must be tracked and advertising channels that are underperforming must be abandoned in favour of more effective methods.
Take a look at some of our client’s sites that embrace video:
http://www.essex-bathrooms.co.uk/news/essex-bathroom-design/essex-bathrooms-video
http://www.allisonpaving.co.uk
http://www.serenityperformance.co.uk/
What if there was one approach that could increase visits to your website, increase conversion rates, reduce abandoned shopping carts, reduce returns, and increase brand awareness, engagement and respect? What if it could keep on doing all this for years but cost less than a single ad in a local newspaper?
Welcome to the world of online video. Why do you need it?
Video drives more visitors to your website
Use Universal Search to your advantage. Back in May 2007, Google introduced ‘Universal Search’, which basically means they try to blend listings for news, images, local searches and video into the web page results you get when you search. According to Forrester Research, the relative lack of videos compared to web pages vying to appear in Google’s results means that adding a video to your website makes it more than 50 times more likely to show up on the first page of results. They also noted that most of the videos already indexed by Google aren’t well optimised for searches, so if you make an effort, your chances of success can be even higher.
Video ads are more effective than display ads
Fox Networks and comScore Inc. studied four UK ad campaigns that used both online display ads and video ads to gauge the effectiveness of these forms of advertising.
Video helps convert browsers into buyers
There are many, many examples of companies who have found online video increases their sales. Here are just a few:
eBags.com – Jon Nordmark, the founder of eBags.com, spoke on a panel at the Streaming Media West Conference in October 2008, and described the results of a test they ran across 50,000 product page views – “What we discovered was that the conversion rate increased 50.1% for those users that clicked the “play” button in the video compared to the control group, and 138.9% for those users that watched the entire video compared to the control group.”
Shoeline.com – Online shoe retailer Shoeline added hundreds of product videos to its site in 2008. The videos are very simple – just a close-up shot of the shoes on a model’s feet as she turns slowly around. Frank Malsbenden, VP of Shoeline’s parent company, says “If there’s a style they’re interested in, consumers can read about the benefits and features and see images. But unless there’s a video on a model’s foot, they’re not going to know what it looks like in action.” The videos had the desired effect – Shoeline found product pages with videos had a 44% higher conversion rate than those without.
Pets United – Pets United added over 1,200 videos across three of its nine sites—Dog.com, Horse.com and Statelinetack.com—with plans to add more at the rate of about 100 videos per month. In October 2008 co-founder and CEO Alex Tabibi was pleased with the results, saying “It appears that a general rule is, if someone watches a video on a product, that improves the sale of that product by about 50%”
video reduces shopping cart abandonment and product returns
Mayer Gniwisch, co-founder and President of online jewellery retailer Ice.com, reports two significant benefits of product videos on their site, which experienced a 40% rise in conversion rates on products highlighted in online videos and, by showing its products on models in videos, which puts the size and appearance of jewellery in a better context for viewers, reduced the return rate on some products by 24%.
- The majority of website visitors like video instruction guides
- The vast majority prefer videos instead of text instructions
- Most wanted to use a video guide than actually ask for help from support.
Video strengthens your brand
Increase brand awareness and favourability
Brand awareness is a key goal of most marketing. According to 2009 research, online video advertising excels at aiding brand awareness compared to every other form of online advertising studied, with a single exposure to a video ad resulting in a 1.9% increase in aided brand awareness, while a simple flash ad could only achieve a 0.36% increase. Meanwhile, GIF and JPG ads did not even show an average positive effect.
Awareness isn’t the only way video helps your brand grow. The same study also tested ‘Brand Favourability’, which is how the researchers describe it when consumers ‘appreciate, respect, or otherwise carry favourable opinions about your brand’ and they found that video again massively outperforms the other ad formats studied. Its clear that exposing audiences to a single video ad, on average, results in a 2.30% increase in brand favorability, compared to 0.15% achieved by flash ads.
Increase brand engagement
The Online Publishers Association revealed in 2007 that 52% of those who took part in their survey had ‘taken action’ after seeing an online video ad. Having a video on your website allows consumers to engage with the brand, including 31% looking at the company’s website after viewing the video, and 16% making a purchase or taking out a subscription.
This study was very clearly reinforced a year later by research from the BIA Kelsey group, focusing specifically on consumers’ responses to online video ads for local businesses. They found that, of those who said they saw a local online video ad that month, 47% subsequently visited the advertiser’s Web site, 19% asked for more information about the advertiser’s product or services, 18% visited the advertiser’s store to see the product and 17% percent made a purchase. The Kelsey Group cited “the general appeal of video and its simplicity compared with other forms of online advertising” and noted that even small companies that shun Yellow Pages advertising are embracing online video.
If your competitors aren’t already using video, they will be soon
More and more small businesses are using online video.
With such a huge majority of web users now connecting via broadband, the growth in online video has well and truly begun and seems unstoppable. Webvisible’s second quarterly report on small business online advertising states that in Q4 2008 just 5% of their advertisers had video capability on their sites, while by Q4 2009 this had nearly quadrupled to 19% Rhys McLachlan, head of broadcast futures at MediaCom, told the Guardian in April 2010 that the £12m invested in online video ads in the first half of 2009 would be dwarfed in 2010, saying “We predict that advertising investment in online video will grow by 50% this year.
Can you afford not to have a video on your site?
Simply no, if your competitors are doing it and increasing their market share you should get video on your website sooner rather than later. Why Delicious?
Delivering Delicious Websites Affordably
We have the ability to turn your website design requirement into reality in a short space of time, read our Testimonials from previous satisfied clients to see how quickly we can get your website up and live
