When it comes to implementing video, e-commerce in general is lagging behind the rest of the Internet on the video front, according to Dr. Melody King, vice president of sales and marketing for video production company Treepodia.
But are catalogers lagging behind Web pure-plays? It is true that catalogers statistically don’t use as much video as pure-plays, says Amy Africa, chief imagination officer at Web consultancy Eight by Eight. But there are reasons for that.
For one thing, pure-plays don’t have an offline channel to drive traffic, so they have to depend more on SEO and SEM. “They’ve long known that YouTube is the second largest search engine, so they’ve used and worked it for much longer,” Africa says.
“Also, pure-plays have a higher propensity to use social media, and a lot of the channels that work from a search marketing perspective are perfect for video.”
Africa says it also has to do with creative departments: Offline creative departments produce photos and graphics that have a long shelf life, so they tend to strive for perfection. “Online creative departments know that you can change anything at the drop of a hat, so they tend to be a little more flexible about what they put out,” Africa says. — TP