February 24, 2010
Guest Post By Mike Darnell, Social Media Manager for Treepodia
Choosing the words in your video is important as well
Video is more than imagery in motion. It has a copy side to it as well. Whether narrated, or appearing as bullets or subtitles, the texts you choose for your videos are as important as the pictures you present. The reasons for this are twofold:
How your video is perceived by your audience
Words matter. A subtle difference in word selection can make a big difference in terms of how a brand or a product is perceived. Using poor language, slang, overly techy terms or baby talk, are all choices we can make, however it’s important we be aware of the consequences these choices will have on our audience.
How your video is perceived by search engines
The text and narration in your video may affect its ranking. As of November 2009 Google is using it’s proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition tools to caption videos on Youtube. The implications for this are huge in terms of their capability to index and categorize these videos. Google is now actually listening to what you have to say for yourself, and using it to classify your videos.
Although Googles Speech Recognition leaves something to be desired imperfect captions are better than no captions.
What to say?
There are two types of language involved in “pushing products”:
1. The product description – What it looks like; How it’s used; It’s advantages; How it will improve your life.
More succinctly put – The product’s purpose and why you need to buy it.
2. The words encouraging customers to buy or subscribe.
Better known as – The call to action.
Both types of copy are important: One does the selling. The other encourages the buying.
Recently I came across a list of “200 Words That Make Money.” It’s divided into two separate categories, similar to those mentioned above.
In terms of pushing products, most of the words on the list are the tried-and-true adjectives we’re all familiar with: “simple”, “proven”, “professional”, and “prestigious”.
The call to action terms include golden-oldies such as “guaranteed”, “sale”, “bargain”, and “you”. “You” is probably the most important word on the list, because, more than anything, people love being spoken to directly. While it’s hard to vouch for the list’s validity (i.e. are these really the top 200 words), what anyone can do is test which terms work best for his or her business.
Test what works
The best way to test which words work for any given product is to create multiple version of the same video for evey product and only change the single two terms once is testing. This is a classic A/B test between both terms as every other factor of the video remains exactly the same. Some might say that this is an excessive effort for simply testing which of two words gives a better conversion rate. That might be true, but when one considers that a single word’s difference can impact conversion by dozens of percent, I think it’s well worth the effort of trying. Especially for your store’s best selling items.
Automating the process
If you’d like to conduct multiple tests across hundreds of items you might want to try the “Smart Video Platform” provided by ecommerce video solution provider Treepodia. Treepodia’s platform, designed for medium to large online stores and adopted by top etailers such as eyebuydirect.com, ice.com, electricshopping.com, etc., automates the entire process of creating and testing product videos and even automatically promotes the best performing videos more prominently on your site. The system is based on a pay-per-view model similar to the way Google charges for Adwords.
Disclosure – the author is affiliated with Treepodia
Mike Darnell is the social media manager for the Treepodia smart video platform that provides vendors with automated and optimized ecommerce video solutions
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