Putting videos on your Web site is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers. Most of the solutions have been too expensive for smaller businesses to consider -- until now. An expert tells bMighty how smaller businesses can finally join the video age
For smaller businesses, a Web site is often their primary form of contact and interaction with customers. One of the most effective ways of engaging and impressing customers is through Web-based videos. Until recently, though, integrating videos onto Web sites has been too costly for smaller businesses to effectively implement -- most were forced to use consumer solutions like YouTube. But recently, a number of companies have started to offer hosted solutions that let smaller businesses integrate Web-site videos without breaking their budgets. Benjamin Wayne, CEO of Fliqz, told bMighty all about this emerging trend and how smaller businesses can get in on it.
bMighty: Why is Web video so important to small and midsize companies?
Benjamin Wayne: Historically, if you think about the Web, the Internet is this great equalizer. Your brand can be just as recognized as a company 100 times your size. The ability to use off-the-shelf tools now to develop a Web site means that [even more]. Video has suddenly become a massive form of media consumption online. The end user has been trained to use video. We've found, anecdotally, that if you put a video on your site, 80% of visitors will click on that.
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bMighty: Why don't more smaller businesses have video on their sites?
Wayne: The good news is that online video is an extremely compelling and effective tool, but the bad news is that it is so expensive that it has been out of reach for so many smaller businesses.
The problem is putting a video on a site is very expensive. You often have to build it yourself, and the tools are very expensive -- video is complicated and needs specific software and servers. The dedicated hardware, like the servers, is $5,000 to $10,000 and the dedicated software -- licenses and coding -- is between $5,000 and $10,000. Then you need a content delivery network to stream the video, which is about $5,000 a month. It's not worth $50,000 to $100,000 for a smaller business to invest in that infrastructure. And the early guys [in the video business] focused on the CNNs of the world -- so small and midsize businesses couldn't do it themselves, and they couldn't do it with a professional solution.
bMighty: What about YouTube? Why isn't that enough?
Wayne: [Smaller businesses] do use YouTube, which is a consumer solution. It's great because it's free. But the bad news is your brand is everything. So when you put a video that clicks away to YouTube, you're introducing another brand to your site. Instead of understanding my business, [customers] will be at YouTube watching novelty videos. You will lose your customers. Also, smaller businesses are always thinking about how to get more traffic. With videos, you can put that into search engine submission and that will drive traffic and enhance your site. If you use YouTube, the search engine goes to YouTube. You lose the opportunity to garner traffic off a media asset.
Now there are lower-cost solutions to put videos on a Web site. Companies like Fliqz know that only 50% [of the market] is the big enterprise guys. The others aren't deeply technical, so we needed to make it easy and cost effective. It opened up this whole area. The playing field is level again.
Next Page: Hosted Solutions Mean Lower-Cost Videos
