Product videos are vital to e-commerce sites, but they don’t always lead to increased search traffic or social media engagement. To maximize exposure and buzz, marketers need to explore other types of video formats that are better suited to that task. One example is a ‘making of’ or ‘behind-the-scenes’ video.

Opening up about your company culture and the processes behind your products is a good way to gain, or retain, consumer trust in this age of Radical Transparency. Rather than simply trading on an idea of what you stand for and living in fear of being found out, …

In a double-interview special: I talked with Zappos’ Senior Manager of Photo & Video, Laurie Me’chelle Gates (previously Laurie Me’chelle Williams), who shared some of the tangible, real-world business benefits from her company’s social video strategy.  Before I get to my interview with Laurie, below is a dissection of why I think some companies and agencies are not using social video in the right way.

My “rant” about the big problem today with social video

“Social video” is already being considered the next big business trend. So why am I starting to get worried?

Unfortunately, I am seeing “social …

Video is becoming ever more important to online business. In the few minutes it takes to read this post, at least 200 hours of video will be uploaded to the Internet and 8 million or so videos will be watched. And these stats are for YouTube alone.

With so much video about, you’d think every mid-to-large-sized e-commerce site would be running a well-oiled, high impact video program by now, but you’d be wrong.

Many e-commerce merchants are still learning the hard way that producing and incorporating video that boosts traffic, conversion and brand value isn’t as easy as it seems.…

If you are an e-commerce business or retailer, it’s a no-brainer to be doing videos of the products you want consumers to buy.  Many businesses today recognize that product videos are a great way to get online visibility in search engines and social media, as well as engage with consumers on a level that static photos and text can’t.

Product videos are also big with the younger generation, the GenY’s or Millenials. The folks over at EXPOTV.com shared with me their research confirming that the 16-34 age group are even more interested in product video than other age groups.

However …

E-commerce video continues to scale. Last year, a whopping 73% of US retail websites incorporated video clips, according to eMarketer. Still, video remains woefully underused and hard to find on many e-commerce sites.…

I recently had the opportunity to interview Scot Wingo, who is on the Board of Directors for Shop.org as well as the Founder and CEO for global e-commerce platform provider, ChannelAdvisor. In the interview, Scot shares his insights on how the retail industry can utilize video commerce to strategically improve product conversion.…

Recently, I’ve gone on the record during a series of webinars about a new trend many email marketers are seeing when “A/B testing” clickthrough rates for video email campaigns featuring in-email video.  More particularly, I’m referring to when marketers try to measure clickthrough rates on a list has been split 50/50, with 1/2 of the list receiving “the in-email video version,” and the other 1/2 receiving a static image thumbnail, where both are intended to drive traffic to video on a landing page. The trend, it seems, is that more and more email marketers are seeing clickthrough rates decline on …

I interviewed usability and user experience veteran, Susan Weinshenk, on some of the ways that the professional UX community can do a much better job with incorporating video to create more positive customer relationships on e-commerce websites – both for improved sales and overall shopping experience.

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I recently had the opportunity to interview Linda Bustos, Director of Research for enterprise e-commerce solutions provider, Elastic Path.  Linda is the author of the number #1 subscribed e-commerce blog, Get Elastic, and provides conversion optimization consulting to some of the web’s largest technology companies.   In the interview, Linda shares best practices and tips for using videos on retail websites, in email, and on mobile devices.

Enjoy!…

Despite this year’s record e-commerce consumer spending on Black Friday, creative online video ads and other video marketing content appear to have been widely underutilized. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to put together a list of what I’ve found to be the most notable Black Friday videos online, along with some holiday marketing tips on what retailers and e-commerce brands can do to utilize online video marketing for the rest of the holiday shopping season. …