18 Nov 2008
Perhaps the largest untapped resource in UK website development currently is video.
 
Audio feeds and podcasts have been around for a long time but few businesses exploit the opportunity that video gives them to have 'face to face' contact with their customers.
 
Once the preserve of businesses with huge marketing budgets and requiring very expensive production techniques, video has now become a mass market product.  With a simple video camera (or even a video enabled mobile phone), a well thought out script and some carefull editing you can put together a very creditable video to show on your website using services such as You Tube for a very modest budget.
 
 
International boat builder Fairline regularly uses video as an 'international language' to display its products. - Now smaller businesses can take advantage of this technology too.
 
eHampshire has collected examples of local and international businesses making innovative use of video to welcome new customers, inform existing customers about products and services and and ultimately to win more business.
 
Rubber moulding specialists Industrial Rubber plc, based in Fareham - Hampshire, introduced an online video tour for prospective customers in 2004, it was so innovative that it won a global 'website of the day' award from Macromedia.
 
Paul Tansey of Hampshire based firm Intergage, who developed the website and video content for Industrial Rubber plc, comments: "By capturing a guided tour on video, the company can present to a business buyer anywhere in the world at his or her desktop via the Internet. This reduces the sales cycle, reduces selling costs and increases the potential for the guided tour to be exposed to a far wider business audience".
 
Video sells your business night and day, explains to customers and potential customers alike your business ethos, the surroundings in which you work and the products and services that you deliver for them. Leicestershire based estate agents Bentons have been using a video introduction to show buyers (often moving from outside the area) the local landscape, towns and villages of the area whilst using a voice over to infoming them of the wide range of services they can offer to clients. Bentons Estate Agents