Case Study: BedBathStore.com Enjoys King-Size Returns With Automated Product Videos

Problem: To help it best serve web-savvy shoppers, BedBathStore.com, an online retailer of bed and bath décor products, wanted to create videos for its entire catalog of children’s products.

Solution: Hired an automated video technology and services provider.

Results: Sales of products that included a video increased 69 percent, while customer conversion was up nearly 300 percent for those shoppers who viewed a product video.

Recognizing the need to stay current in the e-commerce market and better serve web-savvy shoppers, BedBathStore.com, an online retailer of bed and bath décor products (e.g., bedspreads, curtains, draperies, bed linens, pillows, bath accessories, etc.) decided to create online videos for its entire catalog of children’s products in September 2009.

Children’s products represent a highly competitive vertical. Today’s parents often conduct in-depth research comparing not only prices, but quality, safety and customer satisfaction. They’re also shopping online more than ever, and as such, demand more for their hard-earned dollars — better products, the lowest prices and superior customer service.

“Today’s parents are a highly computer-literate bunch,” said Mike Reichman, COO of BedBathStore.com, in a press release. “The demand for online information on kids’ products is increasing at a continuous rate, with more parents demanding higher levels of service all the time.”

Video is the best mechanism for displaying a wide range of products, and has proven an effective tool for increasing shoppers’ trust. With that in mind, BedBathStore.com knew that video was the next logical addition to the company’s website. Looking to achieve widespread, quality coverage of its catalog at a cost-effective price, BedBathStore.com chose Treepodia's smart video platform.

Treepodia’s smart video platform was an easy choice for BedBathStore.com. As Reichman said, “We chose Treepodia because the smart video platform is literally the only system on the market that's able to cover hundreds of items quickly, at a relatively low cost, while providing ongoing measurement and optimization.”

In fact, using content from the retailer's existing product catalog (including product images, marketing texts, product specs and customer reviews), Treepodia's automated video platform was able to cover BedBathStore.com’s entire range of children’s merchandise with high-converting videos in just 24 hours.

Each product now features more than one video version to ensure the highest rate of success is achieved with each video view. This level of optimization is accomplished via Treepodia’s built-in A/B testing engine that compares the performance of the different video versions and automatically promotes the highest converting version for each product.

With Treepodia’s performance-based, cost-per-view model, the price was certainly right. And with a guaranteed four fold return on investment, the decision was risk-free.

The positive results were almost immediate in terms of sales, customer conversion and organic search traffic, all of which increased dramatically within two months of implementation. As Reichman put it, “Just two months after we began using Treepodia’s automated online product video platform, sales of products that featured video rose 69 percent, while customer conversion was up as much as 300 percent for those who viewed the product videos.”

“BedBathStore.com is just one example of how our automated online video solution is helping retailers quickly capture the bottom-line benefits of having video on their sites,” said Melody King, vice president of sales & marketing at Treepodia. “Many online merchants know they want to utilize product videos on their site, but don’t know how to get started. Others already have video, but they have no idea how to measure or improve its effectiveness. In these situations, our solution and expertise can provide tremendous value.”