This week, it’s my great pleasure to post an interview we ran with Marc Joseph, founder and President of DollarDays, and Kevin Ryan, [DollarDays] Vice President and General Merchandise Manager.
It would be great if you could share some details about your company’s history, goals and values.
DollarDays is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It was started back in 2001, because we felt the Internet leveled the playing field and was going to be the next channel of distribution for wholesale and closeout products to small and medium-sized businesses who had survived and were beginning to thrive against the chains in their areas. DollarDays became a public company in 2008 as America’s Suppliers, Inc. We now have over two million registered businesses and average over 1,000 new businesses joining us each day, attracted by our over 140,000 general-merchandise products, which are categories of items you would find in a Macy’s, Target or Walmart. Customers find us because of price, assortment, […] convenience and […] customer service provided by our 20 inside sales people.
We strive to be the premier online supplier for the small guys to compete against the big guys. Our second-largest customer base [is] nonprofit organizations like churches and schools who buy products from us to support their causes. We just went through hats, gloves, underwear, toothpaste, blankets, etc., and now are supplying them with backpacks, school supplies, kids’ clothing, health and beauty supplies, etc. We reach out to nonprofit organizations, because, with our buying power, it allows them to stretch their dollars and get more bang for their buck.
What initially kindled your the interest in e-commerce video? Where you actively seeking out an e-commerce video solution, per se, or was this simply part of the ongoing quest to improve the site and bring up conversions?
A little of both. We had been experimenting with video over the past year knowing that it was going to be an important part of SEO plans and goals. We partnered with a video company to produce several funny videos hoping they would “go viral,” but as we quickly learned, this is a one-in-a-million chance to happen, [s]o we decided to pull back until we found the right method and process for producing videos. When we found Treepodia, we knew we had found a value proposition that would give us more bang for our buck by producing thousands of product videos that would rank in product searches, rather than hoping for the one big viral video to come along.
How did you first hear about Treepodia? What were the factors that led to the decision to choose our solution for your implementation?
Our Vice President of Merchandising, Kevin Ryan, found Treepodia’s ad in a web design trade magazine and brought it to the management team’s attention. We discussed it as a team and decided it was worth pursuing. Again, we saw Treepodia as a value proposition to get us started down the road to video production and success.
What’s the impact e-commerce video has had on your operation so far?
We are still early in the game with Treepodia, but, so far, we have been impressed with the results we have seen. We are extremely pleased with our video viewing rate, conversion rate and product placement in Google search engines. Early on, we immediately started to see our product videos appearing on the first pages of Google searches. This just further helps us create the reinforcement in our product listings.
What have your e-commerce video experiences taught you? What would you recommend to smaller/less experienced vendors, in this respect?
We have learned over the past year that video is an important part of our current and future merchandising and SEO strategy, and that once we found the right partner, it was obvious that […] the results are promising and successful. The key part is finding a way to create videos in [an] automated manner that requires little setup on behalf of the retailer. We all have many other projects and goals to accomplish, and having a partner to do this on our behalf allows us to concentrate on the merchandising, selling and customer service part of our business. The small cost of a service like Treepodia has proven to be a successful partnership.
Original article here: http://blog.treepodia.com/2011/07/interview-marc-joseph-and-kevin-ryan-of-dollardays-com/