Ecommerce Video Will Take Off In 2009 - Report Shows That Product Videos Work!

We know how effective online video marketing and video advertising can be for various industries and sectors across the board.  One reason for this is that video can bring brands, products and services to life in a way that text and static images simply cannot.  As a result, we see that online video tends to offer high conversion rates as it offers a more compelling experience for users and can often provide the necessary last push that a customer needs to actually make a purchase.

With the retail sector, a few companies have experimented with product video marketing as another method to drive sales and traffic to their ecommerce sites. According to research from Internet Retailer, less than 60% of retailers surveyed had video on their websites in 2008. However, online merchants are making search engine optimization and video their top web site design priorities for 2009, with 43.3% of merchants stating that they will update their e-commerce sites with video this year.

Not online is online video for ecommerce growing in popularity among top retailer merchants, but according to comScore, the number of online shoppers who watch retail videos grew 40% in one year.

A new report being offered by eMarketer details the benefits of utilizing online video for products in ecommerce.  The report is titled, "Video Usage in E-Commerce: The Best Is Yet to Come." According to the report, there are many benefits that result from offering product videos.  Below are just a few of the benefits mentioned in the report:

• Decreased shopping cart abandonment rates
• Reduced merchandise return rates
• Overall lift in product sales

Some retailers have been reluctant to embrace online video, in part, due to the notion that online video development is expensive.  However, the benefits outweigh the associated costs  and retailers are seeing the positive effect that ecommerce video can have on product sales.

"Nevertheless, seeing the sales lift from videos, retailers are exerting pressure on their suppliers to create video content," says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the report. "This may be the year the logjam breaks.”

According to SLI Systems, online video is one marketing program that US online retailers are less likely to eliminate or from their marketing budgets.  Only 24% of marketers indicated that they would be reducing or eliminating marketing budgets tied to online video.

"Once retailers build up the video content on their sites, they will focus on turning their video assets into customer acquisition tools by pushing video to other sites, such as affiliates, social networks and video-sharing destinations," says Mr. Grau. "Retailers will also place community elements around their videos to make it easy for consumers to upload them to social networks, blogs, bookmarking services or e-mails.”