It has been widely reported that Zappos has achieved a 5-30% increase in sales conversion by utilizing video product demos on their website. This makes complete sense since users cannot (yet) touch and feel a product online and they need additional ways to become familiar with something they may never have seen in real life. Video product demos can provide consumers with a better understanding of a product and how it can perform for them.
Even better than the Zappos example is the success of informercials and TV shopping networks. These mediums use video as the primary driver of sales. Video will continue to grow as an effective medium to provide depth of information, not only on e-commerce sites, but on information-driven sites such as news outlets and written entertainment. With the explosion of video-capable smartphones and netbook sized computers, consumers can now access video content just as easily as text, most of the time. If you are not using video, now is the time to start thinking about it.
Producing video instead of written content has a number of advantages. First is the ability to distribute that video content to numerous outlets where people can find you. At this moment, duplicate video content is not heavily penalized by the search engines because it is relatively undetectable. Cross-posting your content, even if it is product-specific, is a great way to potentially leverage the power of sites like youTube, Google Video and other niche sites. YouTube is now the #2 search engine on the planet. If you sell products, you MUST be creating video and distributing it on YouTube with focused attention to SEO.
If you produce video for demonstration purposes, make sure that you do not treat it as a replacement for product art. For example, don't just shoot a picture of the product itself. Rather, demonstrate its actual usage, let the potential customer see how they may use the product. The goal, after viewing the video, would be for a consumer to imagine themselves using the product in their own particular situation.
Watch some infomercials and the home shopping network to gain ideas about the language the pitchmen use. You need to convey a sense of urgency and enthusiasm for the product. However, be genuine; video is very revealing and a viewer will know if you are actually passionate about a project. If you have never done this before, you will want to make many takes to rehearse and get it correct. You are looking for clear speech, good screen presence, conscise product descriptions, and drive the user to add the product to the cart and checkout. Adding a verbal call to action at the end of your pitch is a good idea to consider.