Billions of views on the Internet every day drive one of the biggest industries on the planet: advertising. The sheer size of that market and the competitive nature of vying for consumer attention results in a constant need for innovation. Readers are jaded, and display ads are blind spots.
As a technology company, Cloudinary owes its success to its ability to build solutions that address the most critical challenges you, our customers, face. The companies we serve run the gamut of digital businesses—retailers and direct-to-consumer brands, media and entertainment, travel and hospitality—which, coincidentally, all care about the same things.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and that also holds true for video, one minute of which, according to Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, is worth 1.8 million words. That's why online stores rely on rich media to promote products and sales. Images and videos impart a real sense of involvement with a purchase—a car, a vacation getaway, an apartment rental—setting your business apart from the competition.
Although bringing products to life with high-quality video started as a nice-to-have feature, video has become a key part of e-commerce. Consumers expect to see product videos before making purchasing decisions, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented them from browsing products in person, significantly expanding the e-commerce market.
Slideshows. Though sometimes boring, they are an essential cog in the corporate wheel, having served for decades as the medium for presentations. For a more lively display, consider combining various media types into a single video slideshow, which could serve as compelling, personalized, and engaging content for your users. Additionally, you can apply sophisticated transition configurations and Cloudinary’s many transformation capabilities.
Is your web page speed a pitfall or a profit driver? If you don’t stay on top of optimizing rich media on your website, chances are your web performance is actively (and financially) working against you.
Did you know that five billion users of the top five social apps post 41.6 million messages a minute? Or that three billion JPEG images are created every day?
Not only does this tremendous volume of peer-to-peer activity profoundly affect our social lives, it has also revolutionized the way shoppers navigate the purchase journey. How? By reading unbranded feedback and the like from other users, shoppers can avoid marketing hype and make purchase decisions based on what they often consider to be objective, honest opinions on the merchandise.
Part 1 of this series highlights the basics of user-generated content (UGC) and its benefits for e-commerce. Part 2 describes how to leverage UGC images in e-commerce and efficiently upload, transform, and deliver them with Cloudinary. Part 3 focuses on videos in UGC and the many related management capabilities offered by Cloudinary.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is tapping even more into online shopping and entertainment, so are e-businesses. Many have adapted by accelerating their digital-transformation plans; others are ramping up fast. Doubtless, although the tactics vary, video capabilities are garnering a lot of attention—and for good reason.