Online Stores, Shoppers Embrace Rich Media
By Anna Johnson on January 21st, 2010Research by Easy2 Technologies, which develops rich media tools for online merchants and product manufacturers, indicates that both online stores and shoppers are increasingly embracing rich media content for product demonstrations and other purposes on retail websites.
In 2009, Easy2′s rich retail content deployed across its syndication network of retail websites attracted a 62 percent increase in views over 2008. Online consumers were particularly attracted to rich media product demonstrations, which experienced a 66 percent increase in views compared with the number of views in 2008.
Underlying the rise in views was the increase in the number of online retailers deploying such technologies. According to Easy2, the number of retailers accepting rich media content grew 53 percent between December 2008 and December 2009. Such growth was partly due to the increase in product vendors funding the deployment of such rich media content.
Explaining the rise in rich media adoption on ecommerce sites, John Bukovnik, president of Easy2 said:
“This increase is based on several factors. First, content is king on retail Web sites that sell products directly. Customers use these demos and other tools to get the additional information they need to make a purchase. Another reason for the increase stems from the fact we’ve expanded our syndication network to include increasingly more retailers. This gives manufacturers a simple way to add content on all of their channels, allowing them to push a single demo module to their entire retail channel list within Easy2′s proprietary application called MYO (Make-Your-Own).”
Presumably, vendors and retailers were also driven by results. According to Easy2, sales conversions increased by 60 percent for products that utilized rich media product demos.
In its recently released ‘U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014′ Forrester estimates that interactive marketing, which includes rich retail tools, will near $55 billion and represent 21 percent of all marketing spend by 2014.
