A recent study by the digital division of the National Retail Federation showed that over half the consumers queried occasionally used video to research products.   Of course many of the respondents to the Consumer Use of Online Video for Shopping survey used the information they gained to make their purchases on the web. But good news for those of us in the bricks and mortar side of retailing — a significant number of consumers looked at a video about a product and then made a purchase in a store.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which must make video footage worth significantly more.  You might assume that it would also be prohibitively expensive to create your own footage, which once would have been true.  But today you can either get permission to link to videos from your best suppliers, or you can create your own using a handheld video camera, or a digital camera — or even the new iPod nano —  that can record short movie segments. You can also buy the rights to stock footage, just as you would buy the rights to use stock photos.

Another way to create video for your web site is to take still photos and then create a slide show with music or narration. If this is beyond your technical capabilities, check with someone under 25. You might think, by the way, that this is the age of the consumers most likely to turn to video for shopping needs, but the Shop.org survey showed that “the older the consumer, the more likely he or she is to turn to online video to understand product features and/or how the product works.”

If you have a special event in your store, you can post footage online.  Here is an example of an unevenly-recorded appearance by two sports celebrities in a Nike store.  Even though it isn’t very clear, it does create a sense of the excitement that the shoe retailer created by hosting this event.

An easy way to share a video you’ve created is by using the web site Vimeo.  It’s free, at the basic level, and much cleaner than Facebook. Once you’ve uploaded a video you can e-mail the link to your customer e-mail list.  And if you have more than one video, customers can view them all on your Vimeo site.

You might also want to create a video tour of your store to put on your web site, or on your Facebook fan page (we have one on ours).  Try to make your video segments clever and engaging,  and in keeping with your brand image.  Take a look, for an example, at the clever grocery store “cart cam” in this ad. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a hit that will spread itself “virally,” bringing new customers to your web site and to your store.

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder