News

Treepodia tool tracks the effectiveness of product videos

March 25, 2010

Treepodia has announced the launch of its Control Group Measurement Tool, a new enhancement to the Treepodia Smart Video Platform that accurately measures the impact of product videos on sales and conversions.

The new Control Group tool offers e-commerce and other online businesses a true view of how site visitors respond to the presentation of product videos, by comparing the click-through and purchase behavior of visitors given the option to view video to those who are not, according to a company release.

“It’s important that our customers have an accurate understanding of how online product videos work for their business. It’s not enough to just measure the before and after effect of video on conversion rates, because other variables may come into play,” said Dr. Melody King, vice president of marketing for Treepodia. “To understand the pure impact of video on an online business, it’s necessary to do a side-by-side comparison of behaviors of people given the option to watch a video and the behaviors of people who aren’t. In this way, you can see that when all variables are exactly the same except for the presence of video, the videos have a dramatic impact — an average conversion rate increase of 85 percent, to be exact.”

To get a realistic view of the impact online product videos have on a Web site, Treepodia’s new Control Group tool creates tests where a small percentage of site visitors are not given the opportunity to watch a video, and then measures their purchase behavior against the behavior of those who are presented with video. In all cases, the tests indicate that whether people actually watch the videos or not — the conversion rate is always higher among visitors presented with a video than among those who are not. “This speaks loudly to the value product videos bring to an online business in demonstrating credibility and trustworthiness,” said King.

For example, in one test conducted for an online retail client, the conversion rate (CVR) among those not presented with video was 1.04 percent. When the option to watch a video was added, the CVR among those who chose not to watch the video jumped to 1.47 percent; for those who did watch the video it went up to 4.06 percent.

King said that these results are typical for e-commerce companies that add product videos to their Web sites. Treepodia offers all customers a guaranteed four-times ROI when they deploy Treepodia’s automated video platform.