Case Study: Online Video Yields Increased Conversions for Really Good Stuff

PROBLEM: Really Good Stuff (RGS), a cross-channel retailer of teacher supplies, sought to improve sales on its e-commerce site.
SOLUTION: Working with a third-party provider, RGS began using video on the product pages of its website.
RESULTS: Since going live with video on its site in March, RGS has tracked products with videos producing conversion rate increases of up to 25 percent, ultimately boosting revenues.

Following a trial run with product videos on its site in 2008 that yielded favorable results, Really Good Stuff (RGS) knew that the medium was an effective sales driver. The problem was that the teacher supply retailer didn’t have the resources in-house to optimize the technology. With over 4,000 SKUs, it wasn’t practical for RGS to do videos for just a few products. In order for online video to be a cost- and resource-effective solution for RGS, it needed to be producing videos in quantity right from the start.

After a two-year-plus search for a vendor that was willing to produce RGS’s videos at a price the retailer could afford, RGS went with Invodo. Following a two-month testing period with Invodo where the conversion rate of a product with a video was compared against the conversion rate of the same product without a video, RGS went live with product videos in March.

“We don’t have stores, we don’t resell,” says Joe Preston, RGS’s e-commerce manager. “We’re on the website only, so the one thing that our customers don’t have is the ability to put our product in their hands until after they’ve ordered it. Video kind of eases the pain of that and allows them to look at it.”

While Invodo handles the bulk of the production work for RGS’s product videos, the retailer is actively involved in the process. Preston and a senior-level product marketing representative from RGS attend the tapings to make sure its products are being set up and operated correctly. They review the videos’ scripts as well. But in the end, farming out video production and post-production work has saved RGS a lot of time and money.

All of RGS’s videos are currently housed on its website’s product pages and a landing page that collects its top videos. Additionally, QR codes in RGS’s catalog take consumers to that landing page when scanned. Roughly 5 percent of RGS’s SKUs have an accompanying video, and those are most likely the retailer’s best-selling products. But that could be changing.

“We’re looking to devote a few more resources to do videos with new products rather than our proven ones,” says Preston. “We’re going to see what video can do to help us launch new products.”

Talking in Class
RGS’s target demographic is elementary school teachers. The great thing about this audience is that they’re compulsive sharers, Preston notes. So the retailer is using video as a tool to get teachers talking to other teachers about its products. RGS has a branded channel on YouTube where its product videos can be found, and they also can be seen on smaller sites directed more towards education, such as TeacherTube. The viral aspect of video is key to RGS’s customer acquisition strategy.

Facebook has proven to be RGS’s No. 1 tool for sharing videos. The retailer posts its videos to its Facebook page, then tracks how many times they’re viewed and shared by other people.

In addition to introducing teachers to the RGS brand, product videos are helping to sell more product to those teachers. Conversion rates for products that have a video are trending 25 percent higher vs. when they didn’t have a video.

“Really Good Stuff is doing the right thing by thinking about how to leverage video across multiple channels,” says Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo. “Retailers are seeing increased conversion rates and increased engagement [when using video].”