January 20, 2010, Updated September 13, 2012

With the proliferation of faster broadband, Israel’s Treepodia startup has chosen the perfect moment to launch its automatic video creation system for websites.

 

Treepodia

In 24 hours Treepodia can turn a static website into a site full of product videos.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth? While unable to supply an exact figure, Tal Rubenczyk, CEO of Israeli video startup Treepodia, can say that video is worth a great deal in sales on the web. And with Treepodia’s unique automatic video creation system, anyone involved in web sales can use a custom-made Treepodia video to sell products. The best part of the deal is that Treepodia’s “ROI guarantee” means customers are assured of getting back every nickel they pay for their video – times four.

For any non-professional who has ever tried to produce a professional-looking video, Treepodia sounds like a miracle. Video pros know that it sometimes takes hours of work to get one small segment of a video just right, and total production time for even a short video can take days. Treepodia, on the other hand, needs just 24 hours to turn a static website into a site full of product videos.

Using the company’s unique “Image Reviving Technology,” Treepodia sweeps a customer’s site for static images and text, such as item descriptions and customer reviews already online, and transforms them into a series of moving pictures, with effects like panning, transitions, fading, text overlays, etc. – the same tricks a video pro would use to turn raw footage into a finished product.

For a more dramatic effect, Treepodia can add voiceover, music, or any other audio. As a result, “dead” pictures of products become a fast-moving, entertaining mini-movie that grab viewers’ attention, hopefully “converting” them from viewer to buyer.

Making dull 2D sites interesting

“Any online sales site that uses images, from art galleries to travel agencies to jewelry retailers, and everything in between, can benefit from Treepodia,” Rubenczyk tells ISRAEL21c. “Most website sales sites are two-dimensional – very flat and not very interesting. We turn dull into interesting, using the elements already on the site.”

That last element is key for web retailers, many of whom feel they have already put enough time and effort into their sites, says Rubenczyk. With Treepodia, all they have to do is decide which product they want to “video-ize,” and Rubenczyk and his team do the rest.

Rubenczyk says he understands the needs of his customers – perhaps even better than they do themselves. “I’ve been involved in e-commerce since it was in its infancy, and I’m happy to provide customers with my insight,” he says. In fact, he’s so sure of Treepodia’s efficacy as a sales solution, that the company offers a unique guarantee: Whatever customers invest in producing Treepodia videos, Rubenczyk promises they will make at least four times back in increased sales.

It’s a tall order, and to fill it Treepodia also measures how web surfers interact with a product page featuring a video when they land on it. “We analyze customer behavior and see what interests them about a video, or doesn’t,” Rubenczyk relates. “We produce different versions of videos for the same product and see which one keeps viewers watching longer, and which one causes them to click on the buy button.”

As a result of the various Treepodia team tweaks, customers get the most effective presentation possible. Not only that; after hundreds of experiences, Rubenczyk says that it’s clear that his inexpensive automated videos are even more effective as sales tools than expensive, full-production product videos.

From diamonds to fashion, quadruple ROI

Treepodia is headquartered on the central coast of Israel, in Herzliya, and has representatives in Europe and the US, with dozens of customers in the US, Britain, Germany and France, among others. Some of the companies using Treepodia videos on their sites include jewelry sites Diamond.com and Ice.com, fashion site eLady.com, hard drive producer Lacie, travel site Tripstuff.com and many others.

For many customers, using Treepodia is a no-brainer, thanks to Rubenczyk’s four times ROI policy. “There are lots of services out there competing for the attention of web retailers, each promising them the moon,” he says. “We felt we had to do something extraordinary to get their attention, hence our return-on-investment guarantee.”

Companies that sign up with Treepodia often experience a jump of hundreds of percents in a number of important web parameters, such as the time customers remain on the site. Rubenczyk’s conservative forecast is that on average his clients will see more than a one-third rise in sales of products featured in Treepodia videos.

“Video is the ultimate sales tool,” Rubenczyk tells ISRAEL21c. “What’s been holding it up until now has been bandwidth, but in the last couple of years, with the proliferation of faster broadband, there is a rush to video on the part of all sorts of websites.”

And with video the wave of the future, Treepodia’s unique solution will ensure that an Israeli company takes a major part in the coming revolution.

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