Common Misconception with Video in Ecommerce

By: Terry Detty


The most common misconception people have for internet audio and video applications are with their usage. More often, video with audio, or one of these alone, are viewed as materials for entertainment or leisure in the internet. This misconception is beginning to fade fast.

The most obvious reason is the way audio and video are used as teasers to wet the appetites of prospective customers. The best examples of all websites that use this method are the shopping websites. These websites that sell hot selling products will design their web pages in such a way that highlights of a whole movie are embedded within the web page. In this manner, they hope to persuade the browsing public, who view the partial material, to purchase the product. In simpler terms, a viewable movie trailer is added to the site.

For commercial vendor websites that primarily sell movies and music, video and audio utilities are an integral part of their marketing strategy. They understand that most people want to see and/or hear what they are buying. They know that using video and audio to show their merchandise to customers wins half the battle for them to get the customers to buy.

For websites that are focused on selling published materials like books and audio books, a few narrated passages or several sample chapters of the material encoded in audio files is a good way to encourage a customer to buy their product. Furthermore, testimonials of previous customers have a better chance of being noticed than those that are just encoded in text. Most people usually go to a website for a specific reason. For example, one person wants to buy an independent video but he/she does not know which independent video vendor website to go to. This person will use a search engine to find what he/she needs. Once found, that person will go directly to the part of the website where the video he/she is looking for exists.

In cases like these, the home or welcome page is bypassed where, most likely, all of the testimonials are situated. With audio and/or video applications installed in the web site, the testimonials can be streamed to the customer automatically to whichever part of the website he/she is in. Of course, using audio/video streaming now to project your testimonials is a bit extreme at the moment. However, future technology will make audio/video streaming a material of lesser bulk in terms of data transfer. There will come a time when the whole internet can be browsed by vocal commands.

To get back to the subject at hand, the ability of being able to project your merchandise, testimonials, and other points you want your customers to be aware of, by using audio/video technology is limitless and powerful. A single video clip lasting around 10 seconds is no longer considered a huge burden as far as electronic data storage is concerned.

What can you, as an entrepreneur, place into a 10 seconds long video so that you can gain your customers’ trust or make them aware of your other merchandise? Now, 10 seconds is a relatively short time, but it is plenty enough time for people to convey several points of view. If a 10 second video is worth more that a lot of text writings, what more a video that is 20 or 30 seconds long?

Internet audio and video streaming technology is getting more and more sophisticated. All you have to do is look around you and you will see people watching videos and listening to music with their I-pods, MP3 and MP4 players. Incidentally, the best sources for their audio and video needs can be found on the internet. So, imagine all the audio/video data streaming, downloading and uploading around in the internet, and you will have a good idea of just how measly a 10 second video is in terms of today’s technology.

As I said, the use of audio/video streaming on the internet is a powerful marketing tool. However, the technology for it has matured enough in that audio and video files use more space from storage devices such as hard drives and I-pods. Already, hard drives of computers have transcended the megabyte barrier and are now storing gigabytes of data (one gigabyte = 1,000 megabytes).