9 Tactics to Boost Your Video Merchandising Efforts

In 1945, scientist Percy Spencer gave us all a lesson in how paying attention to detail and being inquisitive can yield great results.

Spencer was visiting a lab and standing in front of a magnetron, a machine that generates microwave radio signals. Suddenly, Spencer noticed that a "Mr. Goodbar" candy bar in his pocket had melted. He was further intrigued when he placed a bag of popcorn kernels next to the magnetron and watched it pop. He realized that the microwaves had generated a heating effect. The discovery led Spencer to invent the first microwave oven.

This is an example of how minding the little details and being intensely curious leads to success.

In online video marketing, no detail is insignificant. Retailers that have implemented a video strategy need to continuously experiment and try new tactics. A tweak here and an adjustment there can make a huge difference in how your videos help you sell things and improve the user experience.

Here are nine video merchandising tactics retailers can easily implement that can have powerful results:

1. Use a large call to action (CTA). CTAs larger than 500 pixels achieve a view rate (i.e., the percentage of page visitors who to choose to view the video) twice that of smaller CTAs. There are places for subtlety, but video merchandising isn't one of them. Make sure your video CTA is large enough that users don't overlook it.

2. Ask for the click. Using a text CTA such as "click to play" or "click to view" can increase view rate by 30 percent. In addition, you can also use a text CTA to drive traffic to your website or encourage consumers to make purchases.

3. Use "calls to action," not "calls to apathy." Viewers respond to text CTAs that ask for the click. However, they're 12 times less likely to click on a basic text link that simply says "video" or "video here." Without an action verb, it's not a call to action, it's a call to apathy. If you want consumers to take action, merchandise for it.