The popularity of hi tech gadgets is sweeping across the globe like a storm and almost anyone is coveting to own one or more of these amazing gizmos. The problem is not all potential buyers of these high tech gadgets are tech savvy and only have little or practically no knowledge of these devices - except for the fact that they want to own one.

This may cause some problems to you as a reseller of these gadgets, particularly true if you are only providing text instruction guides for your customers. What's worse is the fact that many resellers provide the same text guides they received from suppliers, many of which come from other countries like China and most likely would be written in very poor English.

The result - the customers would get disenchanted and frustrated upon reading these text guides. Many potential customers will have second thoughts about buying from you and will move on to other resellers with better services. And if they do buy and eventually find out that they couldn'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 of increasing your sales and avoid customer complaints through well-prepared instruction guides - through the help of videos and pictures. The following will show you just how.

The Benefits of Video and Picture-based Instruction Guides

Giving your customers instruction guides in plain text simply would not cut it. What they need is a guide that even dummies would understand and you can do this using pictures or video. Contrary to what people may believe, it is really not that hard to create videos and graphical instruction guides. All you need is a camera and some creativity to get you on the correct path.

Picture-based instruction guides is more economical to do. Digital still cameras are less expensive than their video counterparts and it would take less time to do a picture-based instruction guide than making a video. Aside from that, using innovative presentation software, you can actually create videos using only pictures and text.

However, if you really want to wow your customers and create the biggest impact, the producing video is the way to go. Not all images can be captured in picture-based presentations and some customers would really want to go into the minute details and absorbed each step in a video instruction - which they could not get solely from pictures.

Making Your Video and Picture-based Instruction Guides

The first thing to consider when making instruction guides is whether you want a full video presentation, use only pictures, or use a combination of both. You don't need to buy high end camcorders or high definition cameras for this purpose. Digital cameras greater than 3 megapixels would be enough as long as you provide ample lighting when you take pictures or videos.

Most digital cameras nowadays can take both still photos and videos so it would be better to have equipment like this. Better yet, use a good camera you are actually selling in your site and make sure that the viewers of the video or instruction guide will know this fact.

You will also need a script before you even begin taking pictures or capturing video footage. Scripts, just like in the movies, are the backbone that sets the flow of how the instruction guide is to be made. It guides you along the way so that you will only capture and include relevant footage and pictures for your guides. Scripts will also guide you on what you should say during a voice over or a dialog while the videos are made.

You don't need to buy expensive video editing or picture processing software to complete your instruction 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 good open source and freely available 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.

Publishing Your Video and Picture-based Instruction Guides

When publishing your picture-based instruction guide, you should convert it first into a PDF format to allow customers to download or open from your website or product listing while preventing them from making any changes to the material. Just make sure that you have complete contact information included in the material.

The best way to publish video instruction guide is to upload them first on a video sharing site such as YouTube. Video files are large and eat up memory allocations for your website or product listing. If uploaded to YouTube, you can just copy the video link or the HTML embed code and use these instead on your website.

The way you present instruction guides can play a great deal in enticing potential clients to know more about your high tech products. Using pictures and videos for this purpose will make you instruction guides much more effective than plain text - and eventually convince potential clients to purchase.