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Just as businesses get used to social media, online video is popping up as the next trend to help drive site traffic and increase online credit card processing. Not only is video both personal and creative, it offers a unique and personal perspective for buyers, and can help increase the volume of merchant credit card processing transactions.

Minimum Requirements for Video: What you Need to Know

The typical conversion rate on products that have video is a 20 percent increase. Video also encourages more site traffic, higher conversion rates and overall sales–if done effectively. There are general guidelines to follow for creating an impactful video to drive sales, and it doesn’t need to be high production quality.

Keep Your Goal in Mind: Create a clear focus and flow to the video, perhaps highlighting a specific product, line and/or service. Include the information a shopper would want to know, such as product uses, cost, value/benefits etc. It’s important to address core motivators and simplify the purchasing decision as much as possible for viewers/shoppers.

Don’t over-act, just do your sales pitch as if you were talking to someone in person looking straight into the camera. Once you get more practice, have the camera cut between the person talking and the products.

Technology Considerations: A Flip video recorder or digital camera will do just fine, it’s just best to use an external microphone. A consumer grade camcorder will work well too. As for software, Windows MovieMaker is a free video editing software, and iMovie offers the same functions for Mac users. These options are fairly simple to use tools when getting started. You can upgrade the software once you have a bit more practice.

In terms of uploading and streaming the video, it’s easy to upload it to YouTube, and then embed the video on your online merchant site. Its free, and you have the added benefit of people finding the video when surfing YouTube. Most product videos are between 30 seconds and five minutes, and videos under two minutes in general are best.

Related articles

• My first experience with Square Credit Card Processing (cloudave.com)
• Credit card fees spur protest (cbc.ca)
• What Causes The Revocation of a Merchant Account (creditcardprocessing.net)
• Your local banker vs. Your local shopkeeper: Looking at the bigger picture through smaller windows (stiel.wordpress.com)
• Square eliminates its credit card transaction fee (venturebeat.com)