iknowthe.net | Internet and Ecommerce Consultant

I came across an interesting case study today. Shoeline.com tested adding 10 videos highlighting different shoes on some of its product pages. The videos showed the feet of models sporting the various styles. The items that had videos experienced a 44% increase in conversions. Now, the company is expanding the number of videos to 100.

“With such positive results on our existing videos, the goal right now is to add video to as many of our products as possible,” said Frank Malsbenden, vice president and general manager of Vision Retailing Inc., the parent company of Shoeline.com.

Though Shoeline’s existing product pages had several images of each shoe, the retailer says it added videos to replicate the experience of actually seeing the shoe on the foot.

Here’s one of the videos. Its not entirely enticing, but it does show the product off well.

I don’t really use twitter much but they have just stopped sending free SMS twitters out. Lots of people are disappointed by this (and I really think they could have offered a pay deal themselves) however, other companies are stepping into the breach including tweetSMS . I think twitter missed a large revenue stream here….

I saw one of the google street view cars last week in Enstone, Oxfordshire. These are the cars that Google is using to populate their new Street View function with pictures of actual streets. For those of you who don’t know Enstone, its the back of beyond, and the Google car was going up and down little farm tracks in rural Oxfordshire, filming up every track. So streetview will be more than just major cities, it will include little rural lanes. Very interesting.

I tried and failed to get a picture on the mobile phone as my camera was in the boot, so here’s one I stole off flickr.

Update : This guy caught up with a street view car!

When I’m looking at rankings for UK clients I presuppose that most use google.co.uk and the “search the web” defaults. Its nice to see some research that confirms this.

Google has increased its share of the UK search market by almost 10 percent over the past year, and has now reached a market share of 87.3%, according to Hitwise. Yahoo’s has slumped from to 4.1% – ouch. Off to update my charts….