There are a lot of great reasons to add online video to your arsenal of selling and conversion tools. The growth in both bandwidth for the average online shopper and market penetration of mobile devices with video capability are happening at a staggering pace. So, how do you take advantage of this new landscape while avoiding costly pitfalls while navigating the sea of choices available today?

Here are three things to consider as you begin:

1. Consumer-first approach

When working on content development projects with our retail and brand manufacturer clients we like to take a “backwards” (“reverse” may be a better word) approach to planning before execution.

Start with your target consumer. Ask yourself “what you would like them to experience and why?”  Merchants and product managers tend to love their products and every detailed feature possessed by the product. Consumers love how products make them look or feel as well as what the product will do for them or how it will benefit them. So, while you might care about thread count in that beautiful Italian fabric, your shopper cares about how the skirt moves with her and flows as she walks. Still images and copy can’t help her understand these subtle realities. A short video can.

Multi-channel retailer White House Black Market utilizes simple 12-15 second spin video to demonstrate product movement online. Note the Facebook icon for sharing on the social network

We’re not talking infomercials here, in fact we push for shorter and shorter videos at the single product level. But if you let this approach guide your planning, you’ll likely see more views and higher conversions as a result. You’ll also need to give a lot of consideration for how your videos will be consumed. Pick a platform that is device and platform agnostic. With nearly 5 billion mobile devices on the planet, HTML5 and device sensitive platforms are a great place to start, especially if you want to allow her to watch a video while she is in your store (or a competitor’s store!)

2. Jog before you run

From both budgeting and user experience standpoints it’s hard to guess the right number of videos to start with. Beyond the obvious guidelines of starting with your top sellers and those products most likely to benefit from video – the more complicated, higher margin products, we coach our clients to plan the assortment so that they’ll have enough videos for her to browse and compare even if it means limiting categories at first.

It’s important to produce enough videos to effectively test and learn. The learning is two-fold - for production as well as the user experience on your site. If you can piggyback your video shoots with your existing photography program you’ll save a lot of time and money as well as provide a seamless brand presentation on your site. You’ll benefit greatly from stylists and hair and makeup, sets and post production but, bear in mind that great photographers are not necessarily great videographers and source your production partners accordingly.

Once your first video assortment is live, measure everything. One of the first useful rules I learned in business is “if you torture the numbers, they will confess”. You are likely to be surprised by what you find out about how she is using your videos to browse and shop.

3. If you shoot it, will she come?

Not if she can’t find it. Make sure you feature your new videos prominently and not just on your site. Integrate video call-outs into your email marketing and at the shelf. Make them easy to find and highlight them on your site search results. According to Jupiter Research, a web page with embedded video is many more times likely to land in the top of Google search results. So don’t just load your video to your site, publish and promote them on YouTube and Facebook and other places people are likely to be researching your category.

In addition to it’s ecommerce and retail channel partner sites, Belkin publishes product videos to YouTube.

Online pop-up stores? You bet - we are likely to see more and more ecommerce-enabled video with embedded pricing functions. This will likely allow you to “detach” your content from your site and create shopping outposts right in the search engine results feeds, on social networking sites and potentially in display advertising. Again, if you want to be ready to capitalize as consumers adopt to the new world of online shopping make sure your videos can be found and seen on devices with screens of all shapes and sizes.

Another smart tactic utilized by WHBM is a Facebook sharing button embedded directly in it’s online video player

So, the budget is set. I hope these thoughts will help you succeed in 2012 as you allocate your dollars to create compelling product video – make sure it answers her questions, learn and adapt as the year goes on and results roll in and make darn sure she can find your video wherever she might be in the mood to buy.