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Product Demo Videos for Free (For your ecommerce site)
By xaby | February 29, 2008
For e-tailers selling electronics and other brand-name merchandise such as appliances, furniture and even telescopes, a relatively new company called SellPoint could help you boost your conversion rate — for free. The California-based company, which yesterday secured $7 million in financing, specializes in on-demand video product tours, and its services are currently used by 100 online stores, including big players in the industry such as Amazon.com, Best Buy, Buy.com, Circuit City, Costco.com, OfficeMax, Sears, Staples, Toys R Us, Wal-Mart and more. But you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 enterprise to take advantage of SellPoint’s Active Product Tour technology. “As long as you have a product for which we have a tour, we’re happy to syndicate it and host it for you,” said Rick Martin, SellPoint CEO. “Our basic business model is this, 100 percent of our revenue is derived from the manufacturers, so when we syndicate the content to online retailers, it’s free.” Showcase Your Stuff
The Active Product Tours are hosted by SellPoint, which customizes the frame around them so that they match the Web shop’s style, for instance including its logo and the same fonts and colors, said Martin. The link to the video presentation is placed on the product page next to the photo of the item. And, he said that the links are not external — they’re designed to keep shoppers at your site. You can view an example of an Active Product Tour here. “We do all the work. Once someone contacts us, we look at the site and guide them through how to launch a tour,” said Martin. “We provide the links and tell the customer where to post them. All they need to do is paste in the links, and they’re up and running.” The company’s chief said when they began making product demos, they spent time studying how retail staff and manufacturer representatives conducted them in brick-and-mortar stores and modeled them based on what they saw. “Product tours are created by SellPoint and paid for by the manufacturer and consist of two things. One portion is the product demonstration video, which could have zoom, rotate features, all the way to a narrative voice-over, depending on the manufacturer’s desires,” he said. “The other portion of our product tour is a collection of content, such as a printable copy of the owner’s manual, and any other specific product info that’s useful, a sell sheet highlighting features or awards.” More Sales, Happy Customers
The benefits of video product tours, according to the company, are two-fold: First, you close more sales, and, second, you reduce return rates. Consumers that can see a demo of how something works, especially expensive items, are more inclined to buy. And if they can see a product manual and zoom in on a product’s design before making a purchase, they are less likely to buy something they’re unsatisfied with and therefore more likely to hold onto it. A recent six-month study by Coremetrics measured a 35-percent increase in the sales conversion rate among shoppers who viewed SellPoint’s Active Product Tours compared to those who did not, Martin said, adding that the average view time is about two minutes. Meanwhile, even if you’re business is more of a niche boutique, you may still be able to take advantage of SellPoint’s tours. Martin cites the case of a small Web shop that sells telescopes and binoculars. The owners suggested that the manufacturer strike a deal with SellPoint to have them create product demos, resulting in the site getting the video presentations for free. “Our paying customers are the manufacturers, we don’t bill the retailers, so if you send a manufacturer our way, even for small niche products, we’ll work with them, you don’t have to be Panasonic or Canon,” said Martin. Expanding to Video Games and Home Decor
Meanwhile, what is SellPoint going to do with all the money they’ve recently secured from investors? “We’ve just launched into the video game area, so we provide basically the equivalent of a movie-trailer for the game,” said Martin, “and we’re going to expand more into appliances and home furnishings.” He said that as more shoppers do their research online first, regardless of whether they buy online or not, more manufacturers will be willing to sign up to have product demo videos of their wares. “Everybody wins because the manufacturers have an added marketing tool, retailers get more sales and less returns for free and the customer gets a more dynamic, informative shopping experience, so everyone’s happy.” (Editor’s Note: For e-tailers in the service business, those selling one-of-a-kind or handmade products, or those who simply want to do their own product demo videos, watch for our story on D.I.Y. video demos by James A. Martin to run next week.)
Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.
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