It's a proven fact that video sells better than audio, pictures, or text. Video combines the best features of every other kind of media: it is as informative as text, as compelling as images, and as overwhelming of the senses and emotions as music. Video provides simultaneous stimulation two of the viewer's most important senses, by far--sight and hearing. The upshot? Video sells product.
Why Streaming Video?
"Flash?" you may be wondering, "What's so important about Flash and video? I thought Flash was just a format for browser-based games?"
True, that's what Flash used to be known for. It used to be way, created by Macromedia (now owned by Adobe), of including interactive elements in websites. With Flash, you could have menus that jiggled when you put your mouse on them, or little pictures of cars that you could click and drag across a picture of a freeway. You could have interactive games.
However, since 2005 or so, Flash has also become the most widely-accepted way to transmit high-quality video over the web. The advantage of the Flash format is that it streams long videos directly to users. That means web users can start watching Flash videos as soon as the page starts loading. They don't have to wait for the entire video file to load. Instead, they load the video second by second, and get to watch it as it loads.
There have been attempts to stream video over the Internet before Flash. However, none have been as successful and effective as Flash, with its FLV-format files. YouTube, the first really important site to stream FLV video to its users, changed how people looked at the Internet. It was the first time that people could watch others' videos with ease, and even upload their own.
No one wants to wait five hours for an MPEG video to load. No one wants to watch bad, choppy streaming footage. With YouTube, people didn't have to do either. Streaming FLV video started to be popular.
Enjoy Flash Technology With Video Streaming Software
Now, you can take the same technology that made YouTube as wildly popular as it is, and put it to work for your business. Everyone loves clicking on a button and watching real video footage start up mere seconds later. Especially if the video both has obvious practical utility, and features something else that everyone likes--for example, babies.
Imagine that you're selling bassinets online. What is going to sell more product: a description of a bassinet that talks about how many features it has? A picture of a baby in a bassinet? Or real, live streaming video? Flash footage of an adorable baby tucked away in one of your products can help you boost sales. Remember: women of a certain age respond instinctively to the sight and sound of babies. A description is not going to trigger that response. A picture is not going to trigger that response. Only streaming FLV video of a baby (or the sight of a baby in real life) is going to trigger that response, and that's what's going to sell your product. |
