One of the biggest challenges facing business today is simplifying choice for online consumers. If we ignore this challenge we fail to grasp the context of our role in the consumer’s life. As consumers, our attention is finite; 24 hours per day is all we have. At work or play we are bombarded by choice and content has no respect for time.
Anything we do to make consumers choice easier and less time consuming is critical. If businesses fail to make choice easier, consumers simply buy from vendors who do.
The question is: Are your products and services easily understood and easy to buy?
Most products and services are complex. When I use the term complex, I mean that more than three things need to be clearly understood before the buyer will be confident enough to make a decision to submit payment. This complexity represents the majority of products and services. All too often when researching a product or service online we give up because the learning curve takes too long or is too complicated. By default, we turn to trusted advisers (peers, friends, family) to help recommend a specific product or service. Unfortunately the product or service that our trusted advisers recommended was great for their situation but not for ours.
The goal is to make our products and services easy for consumers to buy.
Businesses are addressing this problem by fine tuning their websites and adding more and more pages of text and images to try and make it easier for consumers to buy. But in the distracted world we live in, consumers are no longer reading; they are skimming websites hoping to make informed buying decisions.
So, how do you make the buying experience better? How do you keep buyers engaged longer?
Here are five reasons you should consider using video to communicate with consumers.
- Cisco predicts that 91% of all Internet traffic in 2014 will be for video
- 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
- On average, 80 million hours of video are consumed globally each daily
- Marketing Sherpa states that 76% of people find video to be influential in their purchasing decision
- Forrester Research states that online video is second only to word of mouth in strength of influence throughout the buying cycle
Interactive video is best way to simplify a complex purchasing decision. Since consumers do not want to read and would prefer to be lead, consider using a person in video to help consumers make the right choice. It’s simple, easy and most importantly, respects the consumer’s time. “Interactive” means that the consumer chooses what information they want to consume to get what they are looking for.
Take a look at this example of interactive video that we produced for Lenovo, “Choose the Right ThinkPad for You”
Lenovo is the world’s third largest seller of computers. This interactive video is focused on helping consumers to choose the right product. The goal of this interactive video was to guide the online buyer to be able to choose the right ThinkPad for their specific use.
The experience is simple and easy. Based on the buyer’s requirements, they can select from three recommended models. Once the consumer chooses the right ThinkPad for them the video launches the e-store to complete the purchase. If they choose to go back, the video remembers where they left off so they do not need to start from the beginning again.
This type of buying experience is exactly what busy consumers want. The online experience is much more pleasurable as it is active and the consumer remains in control at all times. It is a great example of what most online experiences will become. So if you want to sell more effectively online then you should investigate using interactive video.
Keystone: Interactive video engages the online shopper and simplifies their decision making process by helping them choose the right product for their needs.
Pete Callaghan is our Guest Blogger this week. Pete is the CEO of HuStream, a creator of Social Videos for websites.
Videos are the best way to influence consumers. One minute video is better than 3 pages of texts when you have to influence a visitor to become buyer. In videos we can show our products and or services with its best. Its better if we include a real feedback about products and or services by our existing customers.
Couldn’t agree more. Especially with the attention span of today’s youth, the time of the long text-based articles may be coming to an end. I also heard that YouTube is the number one site that people go to for news.