Product Websites Should Use Video to Get More Sales

If you have a website that sells products, then including a video of the product can really increase sales/conversions. It's really easy today to create a demo video or how-to video of your product. You don't need fancy equipment and editing is simple - you can even edit video on an iPad today.

Here's a good article about how including videos on your product pages can increase sales (it is talking about a report that's available for $400):

170 Ways to Improve Your Ecommerce Conversion Rate (searchenginewatch.com)

They’ll also provide you other stats that will help you decide if you should invest the resources to get this tip done. As in the case of why your product pages need video they share:

• Using video demos of items on product pages increased sales for Zappos by between 6% and 30%.
• Shoppers who viewed video on Stacks and Stacks product pages were 144% more likely to add to cart than other shoppers.
• On Ice.com, the conversion rate for shoppers viewing video on product pages increased by 400%, while return rates dropped from 12% to 9%.
• Shoeline.com improved the conversion rate by 44% for product pages containing videos.

The cool thing is that you make the video once and it keeps on selling for you! It's simply a no-brainer.

Since I majored in video production in college, here are a few quick tips for shooting video:

1. Prepare a script. It can even be just a brief outline. Make sure you cover the main points that you want to.
2. Practice the script. Do a little rehearsal.
3. Make sure you have good, even lighting. Don't mix indoor light and outdoor light together. Use a 3-point lighting set up.
4. Make sure you have good audio. The microphone on the camera might not be good enough. It could catch too much other noise. Your best bet is to use a lapel microphone. A wireless lapel mic is probably your best choice. Check sound levels with headphones.
5. I'd suggest shooting in HD if you can. It's the preferred format now and it'll look good. You want to showcase your products as best you can.
6. If you're good at editing, then plan your shots. One static, non-moving shot that doesn't change is boring. Either move the camera around (a steadicam is recommended) or do a cut to a close up of the product as it's being demonstrated.
7. Do not get too fancy with editing. You may be tempted to do all kids of crazy wipes but fight that urge and use simple cuts and fades. Otherwise, you'll be bringing too much attention to the video itself instead of the product.
8. If you plan on creating several videos, then get a professionally made intro and out-tro (ending) made. You can do that cheaply using people's gigs on Fiver.com.

Putting Video on Your Website

The next step is to get that video on our website. There are a few ways to do this. What you want to avoid is using Flash video or video that requires a player like Windows Media Player or Quicktime. That's the old way of doing things and there are better ways now. This is important because so many people are using mobile devices like smart phones and tables. Devices like iPhone and iPads can't play back Flash video and you want to make sure people with those devices can see your videos.

The two main ways to put video on your website are to either use YouTube or HTML5 video:

• With YouTube, you're not paying for bandwidth and you get extra traffic to your website from people browsing YouTube. It's a great way to go for sure.
• With HTML5 video, it has to be encoded correctly and then you will be hosting the video on your website, which means you will be paying for the bandwidth.

If you need help getting video onto your website or on your shopping cart pages, please contact Webstix and we'll be glad to help you.

-Tony

Just in today... this is from a client using another web host:

"The whole website has been deleted when I attempted to switch primary name and alias with the "help" of XO. Host company XO is trying to restore the files. I may be seriously screwed here. Stay tuned."

(Update 12/11/12: The client is telling us that their host lost their database and the website cannot be re-created.)

We've seen this happen with GoDaddy when switching things like SSL, too (the whole website goes down for 24 hours or more). There was another client of ours who had separate hosting and they lost their entire website because their host's hard drive failed. Everything was completely gone.

People lose their entire websites. It's not fun. In fact, it's a huge headache that you were of course not planning for. We don't want this to happen to any of our clients - if they host with us or not.

We don't require that anyone that wants to work with Webstix host with us. You can host wherever you want. If you do, then your hosting is out of our control and you'll be responsible for it and be the in-between person when dealing with issues. Most people just don't want to be in that position because they don't understand the technical aspect of website hosting - they want to run their own business instead. They have enough to do.

Why Webstix Hosting?

With Webstix hosting, we're small. We're not a huge company that loses websites. If you call, you get a human and we'll help you. We have backups and your website can be restored.

We're not the cheapest host around but you get what you pay for. Our website hosting is comparable to a gated community (we like to say) because we know every website on our servers, we know what they're doing and we watch things. With other hosting, you don't get that and you have no idea who is living next door. They could be causing trouble, which could cause trouble for you and your website (your business).

Our servers aren't in the back room, sitting on milk crates. We use one of the top hosts in the country, Rackspace. They have a huge datacenter with redundant networks, redundant power and so on. We've got backups and our servers have RAID drives where if one drive fails, everything keeps running. Hard drives will fail and we're ready for it. We have 24x7x365 monitoring and have had relatively few problems.

Maintenance is Easier

If you host with us, doing maintenance on your website is a bit easier. We don't have to bother you for FTP access or database or control panel access (which can delay things days some times) - we can get right to work and get things done quickly.

Contact Us

If you are interested in our website hosting, give us a call. We just offer Linux hosting, which is good for most websites and those using PHP.

-Tony

TeamSoft Website Launch

Webstix recently launched the TeamSoft Inc. website. TeamSoft is a Wisconsin-based IT professional services firm, headquartered in Madison, WI, that offers exceptional consulting and recruiting services.

The website is beautifully designed and contains all the bells and whistles you would expect. On the home page are testimonials that change every few seconds as well as the latest IT job listings that they have available (automatically updated). The navigation on the website is fun to use and intuitive. There's side navigation within each section of the website, which also helps their website visitors get around.

You, too, can get a website as nice as TeamSoft's if you contact Webstix via our online form or by phone. We'll let you know what we can do for you and get you a new website design for your company or organization.

-Tony

Don't forget to sign up for the Multi-Million Pound Challenge this year!

You can start your own company team or get some friends together and start a team to either exercise or lose weight. I'm on team Webstix and will count the skiing and ski instructing I do toward the exercise that I do.

For every 1 hour exercised or 1 pound of weight lost, 10 pounds of food will be donated to your designated hunger-relief organization. I'm choosing the River Food Pantry for my pantry.

Join us to help fight hunger in Southern Wisconsin!

-Tony

Custom Website Project Pitfalls to Avoid

There's something that we've run across in our years in this business and it's something anyone looking to do a website design project should be aware of. If you're not careful to ask your website developer about this issue, you could be in for a real surprise later on. We still see this happening (which is surprising).

In a nutshell, find out how your custom web project will be developed. Make sure that your developer (web designer/programmer) is not using any kind of proprietary system, server or code. If this is the case, then you could essentially be handcuffed to them for life.

Let's Explain This Some More

With a website project, there is a usual path that is taken. Us (Webstix), or any other website developer, will most likely sit down, have a meeting (in person or over the phone) and find out what the requirements are for the project. We want to find out what you need. You may know a lot about what you need or just have ideas. Very rarely do we get things all sketched out (if you do take the time to do that, you can save quite a bit of money, by the way and easily shop your project around) so if it's not sketched out, we sometimes include time to do that - more about this in a minute. And sometimes, people just want a basic website that is pretty standard... no big surprises. These projects may have custom design but you're not talking about some kind of custom website project (application, etc.).

With the standard projects, we'll go through our design process, then do coding on a staging server, put in content, do testing and then launch. Maybe there's a form or a simple shopping cart. That's fine.

For other projects, we get clients that want their shopping cart to work a certain way or have special forms. Maybe it's because their products are different or they ship in a special way or something like that. This happens. It's not wrong at all and we're happy to work on these projects. The difference here is that there's typically not some pre-made software or plugin that can be taken off the shelf and used to do what they want (sometimes there is but not usually). When that happens, a standard project then turns into something custom - it needs to be created. This is the kind of project we're going to focus on as I write this article.

Custom Website Projects

When there is a custom website project, a number of things needs to happen. First, we'll do storyboards - which are essentially the blueprints. Nothing works yet but we can go from screen to screen showing what will happen. In this phase, it's easy to move things around, add more things and so on. We now have all the requirements and we know what we have to build.

Next, what any website developer has to do is figure out how to get the work done. How are they going to do it? Sometimes you pick a programming language and sometimes you pick a platform like Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Magento, Dot Net Nuke and so on (those are the platforms we typically use). This way, you're using code that has been tested and is being updated and supported. Why re-invent the wheel?

Here's the important part - you want to make sure that whichever way your developer chooses, that they are not using anything proprietary. No propriety server, codebase, plugin or whatever. If they are, then you are tied to them... forever, essentially. On go the handcuffs!

Some (Bad) Examples

We just saw this happen again. Someone hired our competition to do some work, which was in Drupal. After a while, this local developer was unresponsive. The project dragged on. It was not getting done. This client wanted us to take it over and finish it. We met with them and it was clear what needed to be done. The problem, we found out, was that this developer had a custom module that they developed. They were not willing to release it.

Because of that, this client is stuck. The current developer won't or can't finish the project. The client sunk money into developing it but the developer won't release the work. For us to do it, we'd have to try to figure out the part that the current developer is holding back and try to recreate it. Also, if the project had been completed, the client would not have been able to ever move their website to another server because the developer would then have to release their proprietary code.

This isn't the first time we've seen this, either. There was another company in Madison making shopping carts and they were all on one server, using the same software. We heard that people's invoice numbers would not be sequential because there was maybe an order at one store and then one at another store (on another website) so that other order would get the next invoice number. Stuff like that.

When that happens, you are not able to leave your website developer or even leave their website hosting (servers). You're completely stuck and tied to them. Most clients we talk to do not want to be in this situation... in fact, we haven't met one yet that does.

This is just like going to a company and asking them to make you a car. They find out what you want and make it. Now, when you need to get it fixed, can you only go to them or could someone else work on it?

Why Webstix is Different

We do not use proprietary code. Ever.

You're hiring us to develop a project for you, so as far as we're concerned, you should get that code. We'll never handcuff you to our servers or services. If you want, you can leave us (assuming billing is taken care of, of course) and go to another developer and they will be able to work on the project. You are not stuck when you work with Webstix.

What You Need to Ask Your Web Developer

Here's what you should ask them:

1. Are you using any proprietary code?
2. If yes, what happens if I want to take my website somewhere else?
3. Do I only have to use your hosting?
4. Could another website developer at another company be able to work on this website with no problem or would they have to spend a lot of time first trying to figure it out?
5. What is your hourly rate for doing programming work?
6. If you do not complete this project on time, what recourse do I have?

Website development can seem pretty complicated if you're not familiar with it or know much about it. We get that. We try to make it as simple to understand as possible. As you get into getting a project done, ask a lot of questions. Make sure you're comfortable with them and how you're being treated. If they act like they're hiding something, maybe they are. If red flags go off in your mind, maybe you should stop and ask more questions.

The worst thing is to get into a project that the developer has no motivation to finish (they ignore your calls and emails) and then find out that you're stuck with them.

Conclusion

Custom web projects are risky. With custom code, you introduce a lot of potential problems. The code might not be tested as well. Support is limited. You might be stuck with a certain server or developer. If upgrades are done, things could break.

Honestly, the projects with less risk are the ones that fall under the "standard project" category. The good thing is that there is more and more tested code out there every day. More and more features that were once considered very custom are now standard and are supported. Don't let this stop your imagination of what your website could be or could do. Dream big and then find out the details of what risks there are by adding on certain features. Get things storyboarded out and make sure they're clear to you. That's what we, as website developers, have to do in order to get work.

-Tony