| Video marketing is easily the
most powerful form of marketing online today, provided it
is professional looking, correctly embedded and the right
streaming techniques are used.
Video elements create an Internet commercial, where the product
is demonstrated. Add video testimonials from satisfied customers.
Real people come across as a lot more credible than text only
testimonials that are often falsified. Use video to get face
to face with your visitors. Building a personal relationship
with your customers makes their Internet experience richer
and more satisfying.
Video Production Costs
Production costs of audio and video elements varies according
to the quality and format. The technology for producing multimedia
components for websites is not expensive. Check out the options
on
Fortunately, this cost can be shared with offline marketing
elements. Use your audio and video components to produce CD/DVD
products or promotional media.
Video Streaming Tips
Fast loading - ensure the video is very fast loading with
nothing to double click, download or activate.
Avoid:
- Double Clicking - Having to click you
video player to activate, then AGAIN to play
- ActiveX – Using a media player
that causes an ActiveX popup box to activate
- Client Media Players – Using video
that requires a media player such as Windows Media or Real
to open to play the video.
Use:
- Flash based video – this gives
a professional, slick, fast loading video. Ensure the flash
is property embedded to avoid double clicking the player
to activate it.
- File Format – use .flv and player
rather than .swf to maximize quality and make it stream
much faster.
- Seamless Media Integration - Embedded
video should be as seamless as embedded images. Use a media
player that has hidden controls that only appear with mouse-over.
The video may be auto loading and activating or may load
on user command. In the latter instance, simply use a standard
jpeg and the click to play feature.
Looking at examples of other video page elements is a good
way to demonstrate what we are suggesting above. There are
many to choose from on Google
Video.
Test, Test, Test
As the saying goes "If it aint broke, don’t fix
it". Do not use rich media on an already successful site,
just because you feel you have to. Use multivariate testing
to check to see the response of the media element before going
live in a full rich media environment.
Multivariate testing involves having 2 or more versions of
the page with various media elements embedded, and serving
them in rotation to visitors, testing their response to your
call to action.
For instance:
Page Version 1 – Text and images only
Page Version 2 – Added visitor activated
audio or video
Page Version 3 – Added visitor auto
streaming audio or video
Not all sites benefit from added media. It depends entirely
on your clientele, the current site and how the media element
is presented.
Click to play audio and video are often better accepted on
landing pages, to avoid catching people off guard. Especially
if they are viewing in a shared work environment with their
speaker volume up.
Adding audio and video is pretty easy. Drop box codes can
be added quickly to any web page without affecting the look
or feel of the existing content. This makes multivariate testing
a simple exercise and one that will pay dividends.
Live Streaming Media Versus Click To Play.
It is tempting to think that live streaming media is more
exciting to the visitor than click to play. However, previous
case studies have shown that many people will immediately
close a page if a video starts to play immediately.
Shared environments do not support auto streaming audio/video
content. Using a drop box or an image click to initiate the
video presentation is often more acceptable and therefore
more likely to be viewed. This format gives the viewer the
opportunity to adjust their volume or plug in a headset before
playing the video.
Keep It Short, Sweet And To The Point
Make a good first impression by giving only information that
supports the product beyond what text and static images can
do.
Hyperlinks in Audio And Video
A required innovation of rich media is the ability to make
outbound links within audio and video files. This will allow
the viewer to click out of the currently playing presentation
to different or more focused information.
Without this capability, you must retain interactivity with
your audio or video. At least provide a link to either download
the file of interest or start to listen and watch the presentation
on the internet.
Track Control
Visitors to text web pages skim read the pages to ascertain
whether the content is worth reading.
With audio and video technology, this is not so easy. The
visitor must listen/watch several minutes of audio or video
before they can determine whether it has the information they
are looking for.
The W3C is attempting to provide for embedded hyperlinking
into the middle of an audio or video clip. This would provide
for stage indexing of each media file, allowing the viewer
to jump to key items of interest.
The next step will be outbound links from audio and video
files. This steps into intelligent audio and video on the
web.
Searchable Media Files
Presently, audio and media files are mainly searchable using
printd transcripts. To fully launch into a rich media world,
search engines need another artificial intelligence element,
speech recognition enhanced search. This allows the search
engines to spider audio and video files and make software
populated linking.
Once these three hurdles are crossed, the rich media world
wide web will be transformed from that we are using today.
Blinkx video search engine
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