Last week I had the great fortune to moderate an all-star panel of video commerce pros at the StreamingMedia West conference in San Jose.  StreamingMedia is a show that draws online video innovators, technologists, and a large contingency from the media and advertising industries.  Dan Rayburn, industry guru, organizer of the show and EVP of StreamingMedia.com shared last night that the video commerce session was among the top 3 ranked sessions of the entire show.  So first and foremost, congrats to the panelists: Jason Arend of PFI, Mike Sullivan of Hot Topic/Shockhound/Torrid, Gerry Johnson of HSN, and Rico Nasol of Zappos for making the panel happen!

Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing PPTs from the panelists as well as video interviews here on video-commerce.org. Below is Rico’s presentation.  Along with his presentation, I’d like to share a few highlight takeaways:

- Zappos has 6 video studios currently, will have 10 video studios in 2010, and is aiming to create 50,000 product videos by the close of 2010.  I’m unaware of any other retailer outside of the video production companies (HSN, ShopNBC, QVC etc) with greater ambitions.  Clearly Zappos thinks video is the future of online retail and is putting their money where their mouth is.

- Big value of video for Zappos is SEO - they do transcripts and follow other video SEO best practices

- Consistent increase in conversion rate - “significant increase”

- The only way to do video is self-production - “better control, conveys the brand better, offers the ability to differentiate through video rather than use cookie-cutter manufacturer video content”

- Work with automated video production company TalkMarket to speed development of video

- Interactive video is a big push - use of overlays, thumbnails, etc.  Results still TBD

- Rolling video out to product pages, landing pages.  Specialized sites (ZapposInsights.com, Zappos.TV) are secondary in focus.  Product detail page very important

- Jury on video syndication is still out.  Syndication has to be done “intelligently” so videos drive traffic to product detail pages rather than cannibalize results of product pages in Google results.

Enjoy:

If you’re an online retailer, I have a challenge for you.

When a consumer navigates to a specific product page, it’s fair to assume that he / she has moved pretty far down the purchase funnel, right?  If that’s the case, then the role of the product video is to educate, describe the product, and show multiple features that cannot be displayed in a few product pictures.  That’s according to a recently released Forrester report.  And I agree.

In my opinion, videos that are straightforward, clearly describe features / benefits, and explain who the product is for will drive the highest conversion rates.  However, some manufacturers insist on creating product videos that feel more like 30 second TV commercials with flashy graphics, over acting, and high-energy music.  Why is that?  Clearly, they must think that this video style converts better.  Does it?  If there’s data out there, then I’d like to see it? Anyone?

This is an area that screams for more data.  In fact, I’d be willing to produce each type of video for free in order to run a side-by-side test. If you sell products on your site and would like to volunteer for the test, then speak up now.  After the test, I’ll post the results right here for all to see.

What do you think the test results will show?

It’s been a while since the last VCC TV episode and with the holidays fast approaching it is once again time to kick into high gear.  This go around, we are re-examining an emerging trend in video commerce we’ve touched on before: auto-video.  Auto-video, which I’ve also referred to as “artificial video,” is the practice of taking product metadata displayed on your site (e.g. price, description, ratings & reviews, related products, etc) and featuring this information in a visually appealing slideshow, often with background music and a human or computer-generated voiceover.  We’ve also included a couple of examples of auto-video produced by auto-video vendor SundaySky to illustrate the technology.

Example auto-video in use by Overstock.com

Example auto-video in use by AdventureLand.com