Exchange:Suppliers
From Liveclicker
Contents |
Overview for Suppliers and Manufacturers
This section of the documentation is written for suppliers and manufacturers who can use Liveclicker Exchange for uploading their video content to partner e-Commerce sites. With Liveclicker Exchange, a free service with unlimited usage, suppliers can easily upload their video content and access a wealth of usage statistics for the videos playing on partner e-Commerce sites.
Videos can explain and demonstrate the features and functions of a product in ways a photograph and written product description can not. Product videos show a customer how to use, or the benefits of a product, thereby providing them make with additional information to make a purchase decision. Videos can:
- demonstrate and highlight the key differentiating products features and benefits
- show the product being used (i.e., how a vacuum attachment makes cleaning your car easier; how a stand mixer attachment makes preparing dinner easier, how easy is this juicer to clean, etc)
- answer questions customers have while shopping:
-- How quiet is this humidifier (or vacuum) when in use?
-- What the alarm on an alarm clock sounds like?
-- What do the songs on this CD collection sound like?
-- How easy is this to setup?
What information does the customer want to know about your product that can not be easily conveyed with a photograph and written product description, then create a video that answers those questions and educate the customer on why they should buy your product.
Please review the program details with your retailer partner and we look forward to seeing your video on the Liveclicker platform.
How it works
e-Commerce sites who have a Liveclicker account can invite suppliers to upload their video content. This process is intuitive and entirely automated. When videos are uploaded to Exchange, the e-commerce site will be able to push the video to a number of locations, such as:
- Product pages
- Brand pages
- Video sites
- Affiliates
- Emails
Exchange is powerful because unlike traditional media sharing techniques, it allows the suppliers to access usage statistics for the videos.
In addition, the video is presented using the Liveclicker Video Player, a state of the art video player that combines media with merchandising information.
Where to start
As a supplier, to start uploading videos to your e-commerce partner, you need to be invited. Your e-commerce partner can send a personal invitation from Liveclicker. As soon as the invitation has been created, you will receive an email from Liveclicker with an invitation code:
If you haven't received such email, please check with your e-commerce partner who may have a copy of the email that was sent to you. Sometimes, invitation emails never reach their destination because they are caught by spam filters: Add support@liveclicker.com to your email address book and make sure the email isn't in your spam folder.
The sign up process
Click on the email invitation link. This will open up a browser window where the registration process can start. Enter your name, email, etc., then click next when ready.
When the information above has been provided, you will have to accept the terms and conditions of Liveclicker Exchange before proceeding.
Finally, you will receive a confirmation email that will allow you to complete the registration.
Clicking on the confirmation link provided will take you to the Liveclicker welcome page.
Uploading your videos
To start uploading, click on 'Upload a video' at the top right corner. The upload form will appear. From there, click Browse to locate the video on your computer, then 'Start Upload' when ready. You may upload multiple videos at once.
NOTE: There is a 500MB limit per video. If your video is larger, you should re-compress it to stay within the limit. In addition, accepted video formats are MP4, MOV, FLV (Sorensen or H.264), WMV and AVIs encoded with open codecs. See the video formats section for specific information and guidelines for video uploads.
During the upload process, you should not leave the page. The progress indicator will show you the estimated time left for upload, as well as your upload connection speed.
When the upload is complete, you will be taken back to the main Exchange page, where you will see the recently uploaded files being encoded.
At this point, you may close the window or upload more files. For each of the encoded files, an email alert will notify you it's ready and has been pushed to your partner e-Commerce site.
Video Formats
Of the thousands of video codecs supported by Liveclicker, you are likely to be using one of them. However, in some cases uploads may fail because of some obscure proprietary video format. In general, Liveclicker recommends using the following guidelines:
- Do not upload huge files: Uncompressed, raw video files can easily reach a few hundred megabytes. Whenever possible, pre-compress your uploads. This will save you time when uploading your video, it will save time for your retail partner, and it will not make a difference since Liveclicker optimizes automatically files sizes for Web viewing.
- Do not upload tiny files: do not over-compress the videos you are uploading into Liveclicker. Try to upload at least in 640x480 with good resolution (bitrate 2Mbps and higher). Again, Liveclicker will encode and optimize the videos for Web viewing.
- Use the standard video formats: It's best to stick to the classic codecs and video formats:
- MP4
- MOV (Quicktime)
- WMV
- MPEG-4
- H.264
- FLV (Sorensen, H.264 codecs only)
- ETC
If you can't upload as a standard format, there might be an impact on the video or audio playback quality.
- Stay away from FLV files if possible. Most FLV files are compressed using the Sorensen codec (which is a supported format), and the quality is generally poor. In addition, some FLV files will use the ON2 video codec which is licensed and is not supported by Liveclicker.
- Edit out any pre-roll or post-roll segment that's not usable. Content uploaded to your partner e-commerce site should be directly usable and relatively standard. Please make sure you cut out any frames that are irrelevant for your retail partners.
- Always upload as 16:9 or 4:3: here we are referring to the width/height ratio. Examples of 4:3 dimensions are 640x480, 320x240. Examples of 16:9 dimensions are 512x288, 320x180. NOTE: Do not use 720x480 - this format, often used by Microsoft Movie Maker, isn't a standard format. If you do, the resulting video in Liveclicker will look squeezed.
- Need help? Got questions?: Contact Liveclicker support@liveclicker.com
Video analytics
For each of the uploaded videos, usage stats are easily accessible from the Liveclicker Exchange interface. For example, it's possible to see how many views one of your videos received on any of your e-Commerce partners:
You may also gain access to the fallout report, per video:
Or even, per video quick stats:
For more information
Feel free to contact Liveclicker Support support@liveclicker.com for any additional information, or any problems you may encounter during the upload process.
