The popularity of high-tech gadgets is spreading around the world like a storm and almost everyone is dying to own one or more of these amazing gadgets. The problem is that not all potential buyers of these high-tech devices are tech-savvy and have only little or no knowledge of these devices, except for the fact that they want to own one.
This can cause you some trouble as a reseller of these gadgets, especially if you only provide text instruction guides for your customers. What’s worse is the fact that many resellers provide the same text guides that they received from the vendors, many of which are from other countries like China and would most likely be written in very poor English.
The result: customers would be disappointed and frustrated reading these text guides. Many potential customers will have doubts about buying from you and will move on to other resellers with better services. And if they buy and eventually find out that they can’t make heads or tails with the text guides you provided, you’ll end up with a lot of customer complaints posted on your website or product listings, and that’s bad for business.
But hope is not lost as I can share with you some of the most effective ways to increase your sales and avoid customer complaints through well-prepared how-to guides, with the help of videos and pictures. The following will show you how.
The benefits of image- and video-based how-to guides
Giving your customers plain text instruction guides just wouldn’t be enough. What they need is a guide that even fools understand and you can do this using pictures or videos. Contrary to what people may believe, it is not that difficult to create videos and graphic how-to guides. All you need is a camera and some creativity to get you on the right track.
Image-based how-to guides are cheaper to make. Digital still cameras are less expensive than their video counterparts and it would take less time to make an image-based instruction guide than to make a video. Apart from that, by using innovative presentation software, you can create videos using only images and text.
However, if you really want to surprise your customers and create the biggest impact, video production is the way to go. Not all images can be captured in image-based presentations and some clients would really want to go into the minute details and assimilate each step in a video instruction, which they could not get from images alone.
Creation of instructional guides based on images and videos
The first thing to consider when creating how-to guides is whether you want a full video presentation, use only images, or use a combination of both. You don’t need to buy high-end camcorders or HD cameras for this purpose. Digital cameras over 3 megapixels would suffice as long as you provide sufficient lighting when taking pictures or videos.
Most of today’s digital cameras can take pictures and videos, so it would be better to have equipment like this. Better yet, use a good camera that you actually sell on your site and make sure the viewers of the video or how-to guide know this fact.
You will also need a script before you start taking photos or capturing video images. The scripts, just like in the movies, are the backbone that establishes the flow of how the instruction guide should be done. Guides you along the way so that you only capture and include relevant images and images for your guides. The scripts will also guide you on what to say during a voiceover or dialogue while making the videos.
You don’t need to buy expensive video editing or image processing software to complete your how-to guide. Open source applications are available online that you can download and use for your purposes. GIMP or the GNU Image Manipulation Program and PhotoScape are a good free and open source photo editor that you can use. For video editing applications, Open Movie Editor is a good open source video editing software for Linux-based systems, while CineFX (or Jahshaka Reinvented) would be a good choice for Windows-based systems.
Publish your image and video-based how-to guides
When you publish your image-based how-to guide, you must first convert it to PDF format to allow customers to download or open it from your website or product listing and prevent them from making changes to the material. Just make sure you have the complete contact information included in the material.
The best way to post a video how-to guide is to first upload them to a video sharing site like YouTube. Video files are large and consume memory allocations for your website or product listing. If you upload it to YouTube, you can just copy the video link or HTML embed code and use it on your website.
The way you present your how-to guides can go a long way in attracting potential customers to learn more about your high-tech products. Using images and videos for this purpose will make how-to guides much more effective than plain text and ultimately convince potential customers to buy.