I was thinking about this while navigating the spanish Dell online store. We all like Video, but doest it work allright in all terminals ?
I don’t think so. I use to like the Dell online store, in my opinion it’s one of the most engaging and innovative e-commerce sites online, but today I didn’t enjoyed so much the Dell experience. The reason ?
In the presentation product pages the big flash video and 3D animations made the hole store freeze making a very bad browsing experience.

The PC I’m using at home is not so old :
Intel Pentium III, 931 MHz, 384 MB RAM

This leaves me thinking:
How many people is using old and not so fast computers like this one?
How many of them choose to leave to another sites when this big Flash movies freeze all the computer ?
Is the “eye candy” experience worth the ride or it’s also reducing part of the online sales ?

Flash video and animations are great to show products if they are used with rationality. When using it improperly it just eats all CPU resources reducing the website usability and making a bad navigation experience.

All this rant made me remember the book Creating Killer Websites which advocated splash screens and other design atrocities. Soon it was proved that Killer Websites Killed Business ( And yes, I’m phrasing Jakob here )

My advice is:
Use video, but test it with slow computers, test it again with 10 windows open with less memory and make sure it streams well without freezing your browser navigation. Because this could be just the case of a potential client trying to purchase something at your online store.