Here’s a surprise… online user behavior is hard to predict!

Google recently started adding big, bright “Google Checkout” buttons to selected AdWords text ads. SEO and SEM experts expected this to make more users notice these ads. Apparently they were wrong. Internet Retailer reports that adding a bright “Google Checkout” button to AdWords ads did not increase the visibility of the ads — even though it did increase click-through rates (CTR).

So what gives? When it comes to online user behavior, there are plenty of hypotheses. Don’t trust them without proof.

At SilverDock, we’ve seen this in surprising ways. Pretty much everyone takes one look at our product videos and says, “that’s the future of retail.” We were shocked to discover that, according to our data, product video doesn’t always increase conversion rates. Certain implementations work great — producing 35% increases in sales. Other implementations showed no effect.

Armed with extensive data about what works best for online e-commerce video, we’ve tuned the SilverDock platform to deliver outstanding results for online retail. The lessons we’ve learned are the same as the lessons of the Google Checkout button story — don’t trust your hunches until the data agree, too.

Filed under: SilverDock, ecommerce, effective online video, marketing, online retail, video