Web Video

[Former Member 1]

Matt I have produced a series of articles on video, I believe there is a huge market for business like your own, here is one I wrote yesterday

A common discussion point here at xxxxxxxxxxx is the use of video for ecommerce websites, my own thoughts are, as with everything online, if a process is done well it can beneficial, done poorly it can hurt.

Make no bones about it having video has now becoming a need to have, not a desirable extra. If 2 sites rank similarly it is said the one introduces video would move ahead in the organic rankings.

So what are the things we need to understand in regards to adding video to a website?

1. Do not add your videos to You Tube then redirect to your site, embed them straight onto your website, after a month link them to popular sites like You Tube

2. Do not have videos on auto start, if a persons speakers are on full tilt the results could be humorous but not good for your business

3. Keep the videos short, people do not have the attention span to watch long films, I would say, 5 mins max

4. The words spoken on video are now indexed, to that end 2,000 words on a video clip will always much easier to incorporate onto a page than text

5. Decide what videos you want on a specific page, then try and incorporate page relevant keywords within the video transcript

6. Poorly produced videos will devalue your website and business

7. Placement is important, having the videos viewed is desirable


For ecommerce websites video is the key to combating duplicate content

Let's look at one of our Clients websites xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Due to the amount of products on this site there are always going to be a problem displaying good quality unique content, this is a common problem for these type of sites.

To get around the duplicate content issues we introduce a short video on each item. People are more likely to buy a product they can see on a video, rather than than a picture, how many times do we believe something looks good, purchase it, open the box and think, 'crikey is that it'.

Video is here to stay, however proper implementation is the key to success

Having been making Corporates specifically since 1986 I've seen quite a bit of ebb and flo. But business is and always has been buoyant as one delivery method ebbs another one flows. And it's actually quite difficult to get a bit of a peace sometimes

One of the strengths of my business is that we specialise in producing programmes. And the programme is a stand alone product which can be delivered across a variety of platforms. Web Video being just one of them. To date though the uptake of web video has been very very low. Of course we don't actually design websites .

I suspect though now that bandwidths are almost universally adequate to stream video there may well be a strong future for web-specific video. My personal view is that limited bandwidth is what has held Web Video back to date. And in fact this year we hope to launch a new production package that would be suitable for this sort of use. It's a very short (2-3 minute) company profile which is delivered in several formats ranging from 1080i HD on Blu-Ray compatible disc through to various 'computer' formats.

There's almost nothing I'd take issue with in what you wrote. Running length perhaps should be closer to 2 or 3 minutes, perhaps even less. Certainly 5 minutes as a maximum is a reasonable figure. These are very much like exhibition videos where you're only going to get the viewer to pause for a short time.

And yes! DEFINITELY NO auto-start! My own reaction to a website that starts squawking at me is to immediately click the cross in the top right hand corner.

 

[peteark]

For ecommerce websites the main problem is

If a site has say 20 similar items, producing the video so the words are unique on each clip will be difficult, get around this and the product will be desirable if marketed well and cost effective.

I had a similar problem with demographics it took me several months to work out an ethical way of targeting geo specific terms on the same website whilst getting around the duplicate content penalty.

Generally speaking there are never any quick answers, just trials and development.

 

[Former Member 1]

Surely it's just a matter of creative scriptwriting?

You'd have the same issues if you were writing descriptions to go with stills. If you have the audio simply as voice-over it can be replaced as needsbe with relative ease.

My only reservation is that the process will be relatively expensive. I could see this sort of thing being practical for high ticket items. Property, cars, expensive jewellery etc. Maybe even a sort of 'QVC' online type setup where if you can get the volume you'll cover the overhead involved with the pitch.

 

[peteark]

That's right

So you set up the business around the attractive items and set up telephone consultation sessions for the smaller business owners

People have not cottoned onto video as the answer to Google's duplicate content penalty, but they will