Nine Tactics to Boost Your Video Merchandising Efforts

By Craig Wax

In 1945, scientist Percy Spencer gave us all a lesson in how paying attention to detail and being inquisitive can yield great results.

Spencer was visiting a lab and standing in front of a magnetron, a machine that generates microwave radio signals. Suddenly, Spencer noticed that a "Mr. Goodbar" candy bar in his pocket had melted. He was further intrigued when he placed a bag of popcorn kernels next to the magnetron and watched it pop. He realized that the microwaves had generated a heating effect. The discovery led Spencer to invent the first microwave oven.

This is an example of how minding the little details and being intensely curious leads to success.

In online video marketing, no detail is insignificant. Retailers that have implemented a video strategy need to continuously experiment and try new tactics. A tweak here and an adjustment there can make a huge difference in how your videos help you sell things and improve the user experience.

Here are nine video merchandising tactics retailers can easily implement that can have powerful results:

1. Use a large call to action (CTA). CTAs larger than 500 pixels achieve a view rate (i.e., the percentage of page visitors who to choose to view the video) twice that of smaller CTAs. There are places for subtlety, but video merchandising isn't one of them. Make sure your video CTA is large enough that users don't overlook it.

2. Ask for the click. Using a text CTA such as "click to play" or "click to view" can increase view rate by 30 percent. In addition, you can also use a text CTA to drive traffic to your website or encourage consumers to make purchases.

3. Use "calls to action," not "calls to apathy." Viewers respond to text CTAs that ask for the click. However, they're 12 times less likely to click on a basic text link that simply says "video" or "video here." Without an action verb, it's not a call to action, it's a call to apathy. If you want consumers to take action, merchandise for it.

4. Put videos "above the fold." In the context of the web, above the fold means the area of the screen visible without having to scroll. In testing performed by Invodo, videos placed above the fold achieved a one-and-a-half times higher view rate than videos below the fold. If your video player won't fit above the fold, include other tools such as icons or image overlays to ensure that you're making it easy for consumers to find your videos.

5. Use effective video thumbnails. When a consumer visits a web page that has video on it, they naturally gravitate toward the video thumbnail rather than text. If the thumbnail isn't interesting, they're less likely to click. Your thumbnail images should be compelling and representative of the content. Also keep in mind that video thumbnails will show up in organic search results and can improve your clickthrough rates.

6. Avoid autoplay (mostly). A visitor who reaches a product page via search or navigation doesn't expect to be greeted by a video playing. Tests show that users respond negatively to video autoplaying in such contexts. However, there are times when autoplay is appropriate. When a user clicks a "Play Video" callout in an email message, it makes sense to drop them on a landing page where the video autoplays. If in doubt, ask yourself what a typical user would expect. Unless they would fully expect to see video playing when the page loads, avoid autoplay.

7. Submit video site maps to Google. Video site maps help Google better understand what's included in your video content. Forrester Research estimates that properly submitted site maps can increase the chances that a video will receive a front-page organic Google placement by 53 times. You can submit a video site map to Google using Webmaster Tools. Submitting site maps isn't difficult unless you have a large number of videos that need site maps. Some video platform providers will do this for you in an automated way.

8. Make YouTube work for you, part one. YouTube may not be the ideal player to host videos on your site, but it's the world's second largest search engine, ahead of Yahoo and Bing put together. So you'll want to put your video content on YouTube as well as on your site. Drive traffic back to your site with a vanity url displayed in an overlay on the video.

9. Make YouTube work for you, part two. Another easy way to drive traffic from your YouTube-based videos to your website is to use a "secret link." Think you can't link out of YouTube? Think again. Put a text link as the first element in the video description. A clickable link will appear just below the video as it plays.

These are just a few of the tactics retailers can try depending on whether they host their own videos or use a video-sharing site such as YouTube or Vimeo. If you're focused on the smallest details and constantly questioning things, you're more likely to achieve your video marketing goals.

Craig Wax is the CEO of Invodo, the business video experts.