e-commerce

http://www.wineindustryinsight.com/ex_nf.php?url=http://www.vin65.com/blog/Video-Proven-To-Increase-Ecommerce-Sales

March 15, 2011 | E-Commerce | Brent Johnson

Video proven to increase e-commerce sales.

In your tasting room consumers can stroll up to the tasting bar, speak to enthusiastic staff and then sniff, swirl and sip your wine. It’s not that easy to excite consumers on your wine e-commerce website. You need to find ways to engage and convert consumers with content, images, tasting notes, consumer and professional reviews.

It’s been proven that videos can help e-commerce. Over the past few years, Zappos.com has said their videos have impacted sales on their products anywhere from 6 to 30 percent.

While Zappos.com is an e-commerce giant, Ceja Vineyards is a perfect example of a midsized winery producing well-executed product video at a minimal cost.

You may not need to make a video for the branded clothing you’re selling online, or the tickets to a concert but videos are a perfect medium for your tasting staff or wine maker to convey their passion for each wine that consumers are sampling in your tasting room.

“Video might be overkill for some pitches and products, and become more of a distraction than an incentive to convert,” said Stefan Tornquist, research director for MarketingSherpa. “For something complex, visceral, or new, video can be a great fit. Selling fly fishing in the Arctic? Video is going to do a better job of putting the prospect in a buying frame of mind than all the copy you can muster.”

Ceja Vineyards uses YouTube but there are many solutions for hosting your videos with different benefits, Facebook for example would be a great fit if you’re using Facebook fan pages and help cross promote by linking to your fan page and website. Vimeo provides a sleek interface and HTML5 embed code so they are viewable on iPads and iPhones. If you’re looking for a more professional video solution that feautures product overlay, enabling the consumer to purchase right form the video, you could look at a company like Overlay.tv. Your winemaker could lead a tasting of your wine portfolio and consumers can purchase wines featured by clicking on a hotspot in the video, converting them while they're excited and ready to buy (See an Armani Exchange example).

Here’s another example from Inman Family Wine, as Kathleen explains her wine in a way words on a webpage simply can’t:

If you haven't tried videos, I recommend talking to a few wineries that have such as Ceja or Inman. Start small, a simple Flip camera is only around $150 then use YouTube, Facebook or Vimeo to place the video on your e-commerce site and measure your results.