Retailers are responding to the growing appetite for online videos by adding them to their Web sites to both differentiate themselves from competitors as well as to keep up with what consumers expect from their online shopping experience.
The top 50 U.S. online retailers that offer videos jumped 378 percent in 2009 over the year before, according to a Forrester Research study, "Online Retailers' Adoption of Online Video Content Is Ahead of Consumers' Preferences," published in November 2009. Last year, more than two-thirds of the biggest online retailers hosted videos.
The adoption rate is poised to climb further, as revealed by a February 2010 Multichannel Merchant survey. Among the two-thirds of respondents who indicated they were planning a site redesign in the next 12 months, some 42.3 percent said they would add video to their site.
That makes it the second-highest priority, well behind social media tools but ahead of other popular Web site enhancements including customer reviews and personalized recommendations.
