While video may bump up a site's visibility in both the big engines and video-specific search
services, recent Coremetrics data found that consumers who viewed on-site video tours were 35% more likely to actually make a purchase.
Over 30 days, Coremetrics analyzed more than a
million shopping sessions at CompUSA.com (which features Sellpoint's video retailing platform) and found that shoppers who'd seen a video tour spent more than 2.5 minutes on average viewing each
individual product -- an engagement metric that likely factored in to their intent to purchase.
David Wilson notes that like user ratings and reviews, video product tours have straight SEO benefits, but also fall into the category of social media optimization (SMO) because you can make them portable. And by allowing your prospects to share those videos via email, mobile or blog, you're giving them the ability to evangelize your product throughout the entire purchase process.