Shoppers on llbean.com will notice a link to Product videos in the footer of the site, where a small collection of videos (currently under a dozen) are found.

Just a few notes on the videos:

- Some videos are produced on location (e.g. Manatee Kayak, Runaround Cruiser, Bigelow Day Pack, Ascent Gore-Tex Jacket), while others appear to be filmed in an in-house studio (Waterproof Storm Jackets, Fleece Jackets)

- Cost-cutting techniques that incorporate still shots are found in some of these videos (e.g. SunSmart Apparel, Waterproof Storm Jackets).  Less complex shots that are “more or less” product stills are also featured in several of the videos.  In terms of production quality, all the videos are ‘good’ while some of the videos are higher quality than others (notably, Manatee Kayaks, Ascent Gore-Tex Jackets, Fly Rod & Reel Outfits) while poor lighting and lackluster set design made Fleece Jackets a bit lower-grade.  Based on the variety of production techniques used (different locations, incorporation of video product stills v. actual stills, number of different angles used for product shots, and educational v. product videos) it would appear L.L. Bean is still very much in the ‘experimentation’ mode with regard to online video.

- A variety of in-house employees are featured in the videos as product experts.  L.L. Bean has chosen to feature employees who work in Product Development to appear as the experts, thereby showcasing their in-house expertise and strong, direct knowledge of the products sold.

As far as next steps for L.L. Bean, they already appear to be using video for merchandising.  Of note, they place they callout for online video on a product page as a prominent secondary element, as the first callout under the product title.  The design, however, isn’t completely ‘clean’ and I wonder if a video icon placed next to view/zoom might be more effective given how the eye is naturally drawn to the main product image.

L.L. Bean takes its product page treatment a level beyond prominent callout, as they embed the video player directly on the product page.  Though the placement is below the fold, it appears on the default overview tab and clearly is designed to elicit engagement from shoppers considering product purchases.  The strong ‘play’ button callout works well, and I didn’t encounter rendering issues with the video.  As a best practice, Flash is used (as opposed to Cabela’s, which does great harm to its online video efforts through the choice of Windows Media Video).

Since L.L. Bean is interested in efficient production, they might benefit from some of the techniques I outlined in the last Video Commerce Consortium blog post describing how private label retailers can produce reasonably high video at reasonably low cost.  As a retailer selling both apparel and gear, L.L. Bean might also want to conduct a study of its high margin/hot seller products and consider inventory turn as a way to guide its video production efforts moving forward, as a method to get the most bang for its buck.  The initiative also appears to be primarily a merchandising effort to date.  L.L. Bean could possibly get better results by syndicating its video assets to other marketing channels, especially high impact channels like email and search.

This blog is designed to complement the blogging efforts already underway at the Video Commerce Consortium, which maintains a research/best practices/trends focus on video commerce and facilitates an industry discussion group, and VideoRetailer.org, which maintains more of a focus on the video commerce industry and its players.  As opposed to the themes of those blogs, CommerceVideos.com will instead focus more on actual implementations of e-commerce video by leading online retailers.    The idea behind this blog is to offer readers commentary and analysis focused on retail video, and also to help ’spread the gospel’ of e-commerce video by covering retail video implementations folks otherwise might not know about.  If you are an online retailer, and are interested in having us cover a specific video project you or your company has deployed, drop me a line at justin [a t] video-commerce [d o t] org.  I try to return all email within 24 hours but due to the volume of mail I receive it might sometimes take a little longer.

I’m Justin Foster,  the founding blogger on CommerceVideos.com.  I’m also the founder of the nonprofit Video Commerce Consortium and co-founder of the for-profit video commerce technology startup Liveclicker, Inc. While I do maintain for-profit interests, this blog is designed to promote general understanding of video in e-commerce and not just my narrow interests.  With that in mind, I’d like to make a call for bloggers to join me in helping to make CommerceVideos.com a thriving blog dedicated to covering online retail video.  If you’re interested in joining me as a founding blogger, send me an email at justin [a t] video-commerce [d o t] org and we’ll discuss.

Until next time…

Happy Selling!