Zappos.com, the online shoe (and more) retailer recently acquired by Amazon.com, is experimenting with video promotions to drive click throughs to produce detail pages. Here is an example* from their first effort, promoting Nike running shoes. (Scroll down to see the video.)

As you watch the video you can mouse over both the shoes as well as the shirt the model is wearing. The video shows a box over clickable items, which then launches a small dialog box from which the viewer can then click to go to learn more about that product. Nifty technology!

The way Zappos is deploying this facilitates seeing the product in a rich medium while still making it very easy to progress to the product detail page where the sale will be completed. This approach could be effective for any product that would benefit from a video presentation to convey its value and message.

* I tried to use the embeddable video for this post but the way they have created it takes up a huge amount of space since it displays a lot more interface than just the video. This will need to be adjusted because few people will share a video that will blow up their web site layouts.