The Power of Video

German specialty retailer Max Röhner Leather Goods can be classified as a traditional small European enterprise — with an innovative twist.

With five bricks-and-mortar shops, the retailer has been selling high-quality bags, wallets and accessories since 1890. It launched an online shop in 2001, and is in the process of re-launching that site to coincide with the 120th anniversary of its first shop.

Profibag.de, the Internet division, has been doubling its online sales and conversion rates in the last few months by using automated product video technology that provides virtual customer service. Treepodia’s automated video solution engages the customer’s attention, intensifies interest in (and understanding of) the products and increases the drive to possess the products “touched” online.

Owner and manager Peter Röhner believed videos “would provide a much better online shopping experience.” The company has always strived “to modernize and innovate,” he says, and chose the platform from Israel-based Treepodia because it “was easy to integrate and it allows us to serve our customers in the best possible way by giving them better conditions in which to shop.”

Better-than-expected results
Röhner expected an improvement in customer loyalty and conversion rates as a result of putting Treepodia-developed product videos on its site. Those expectations were met.

“We’ve seen an almost 50 percent conversion rate increase on average for the products with video embedded,” Röhner says.

The first videos went live in March, and Röhner now has videos for approximately 200 of its more than 1,100 products. Most of the videos are for products that retail for more than $100 and focus on attributes that make a particular product unique.

Embedding video on a website typically generates incremental sales and higher shopper-to-buyer conversion rates, says Treepodia founder and CEO Tal Rubenczyk. Consumers used to seeing dynamic images on the Internet like the excitement that videos create.

“You can see that in the success of YouTube and other video sites. People are not very attracted by flat web pages,” says Rubenczyk. “They want to see videos that create a more dynamic presentation. And they want to be served … to feel that someone is giving them the content that they need. And that service, which is video, helps motivate a purchase.”

Rubenczyk estimates that if e-retailers were to try to create videos from scratch, the average upfront cost would be greater than $1,000 per product. By comparison, implementing Treepodia’s video platform was both simple and inexpensive. “We lease the program and Treepodia hosts the service on their server,” Röhner says. “The lease cost is not at all expensive, and their management guarantees to reduce the fee if you don’t see a four-fold increase in both sales and shopper conversion rates. And we did see that.”

Video customization
To implement the program, Röhner sent Treepodia an XML of all the key data in Profibag’s catalog, including product images, descriptions, prices and promotions. Röhner is working with Treepodia to add customer reviews to the database as well.

Röhner and his team also worked with Treepodia to select from among hundreds of video templates, all of which can be customized to reflect the look and feel of the client’s business. Once the template was chosen, customized and populated, the process to go live took less than a day, Röhner says.

When the platform goes live, it automatically detects any changes that Profibag plans to make on its site, and then creates and launches new videos to reflect those changes, keeping all content up to date. That includes price changes, new product introductions or special promotions.

One feature that Röhner particularly liked is the module that lets Profibag measure video effectiveness. Not only can Röhner see what the conversion rate is between shoppers who don’t watch a video versus those who do, he and his team can also evaluate which of several videos for the same product generates the most positive sales result.

“Our system is always measuring the results,” Rubenczyk says, “and once the system reaches, through historical observation, a statistical conclusion, it will always show customers the most effective video.”

In one instance, Version A of a product video made without text subtitles generated a 0.8 percent conversion rate. Version B, which included text subtitles, generated a 9.1 percent conversion rate; once the system had gathered enough information to statistically conclude that Version B was superior to Version A, it only played Version B.

The service also helps attract visitors to the site, since major search engines like Google and Yahoo rank sites with video higher in their results.

Treepodia recently introduced a new service, Treepodia Video Distributor, through which it will mass upload customers’ product videos to the most popular video sharing sites like YouTube, Dailymotion and Facebook. That service embeds a link in the product videos that connects the viewer directly to the website of the retailer selling the featured product.

Another new service, Smart Banner, allows retailers to create banners with product videos. Röhner says he is currently working with Treepodia to implement these new services, which “should help attract more new customers to Profibag.

“We know we are already attracting new customers with the videos, because we can see that in the growth of our online sales,” he says.

Röhner adds that not only is the platform “smooth and uncomplicated to implement,” it also creates valuable marketing and customer service benefits. “In my view, these videos improve and enhance the customer online shopping experience and they help sell products.

“Videos, I think, are probably the future of online shopping.”