Since the evolution of the Web to 2.0 and beyond… more and more companies have been plastering their sites with Rich Media in the forms of AJAX, Flash, Flex and embedded Video clips.
When it comes to Video, aside from directories like YouTube, VEOH or content and news sites, up until recently it has rarely been used as a medium to aid conversion. This is changing rapidly though as companies begin to toy and test the application of video within booking and purchase paths.
Cue EyeView, the self proclaimed ‘first rich-media conversion platform‘. With clients like eBay, Yahoo and Nokia it’s definitely getting some strong exposure and building out it’s credibility. The platform and analytics tools supporting it look to be very intuitive and useful – the video and presentation style itself are very compelling. But I have to admit in terms of usage, it seems most of the implementations so far (click on some of the clients listed here to see how the clips work) are related to how the various sites work. It seems that in the majority of cases it’s aimed at B2B rather than B2C and focuses more on educating the viewer on how to make the most of the site/service. In my view, it’s not being used as much more than a rich-media sales deck really, albeit a compelling online one… but the platform seems much more capable than that.
When I first read about the guaranteed increase in conversion, I was hoping to see rich-media implementations within a booking or purchase path that would impact conversions… but I couldn’t find any. I’d really like to see EyeView’s technology used in a more direct ROI format… I think there are quite a few possibilities…
Show the Product (retail): Vzaar provides a widget that allows eBay sellers to upload video clips of the product their selling. Particularly useful for presenting complex products that require several images. It lends a more realistic view to the product. Others like ShopFlick, position the video more prominently while the user is browsing and searching (in fact their whole model depends on it). I think EyeView could be used quite effectively for retail products in a similar way.
Interviews: Amazon have started to use embedded video to show interviews with authors telling what the book was about. Here’s an example I came across when browsing for the Outliers book by Malcom Gladwell (scroll down to the video clip). I wonder whether the numbers would prove that an increase in conversion can be attributable to the clip?
Reviews: Hotelly.com is using embedded video differently in the online travel space. It’s focus is on crossing between TripAdvisor and YouTube to get user-generated video reviews about hotels as a way to increase conversion.
Any other ideas?
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