Have you ever found yourself clicking through the same three product photographs while shopping online, hoping a better angle will somehow materialize? While crystal clear, HD photographs are an important component of online sales; they’re not the final frontier for visual content. This is increasingly true as mobile commerce (“m-commerce”) becomes the preferred shopping method for busy consumers on the go.
Video Ups Conversions
Creating engaging product videos for ecommerce gives customers a better understanding of products and conversion rates climb as a result. According to a survey from Animoto, 96 percent of customers say they find videos helpful when making online purchasing decisions. Further, three quarters of the people surveyed were more likely to purchase a product after seeing a video.
Creating and displaying product videos can also simplify your fulfillment processes. Customers will get fuller, more thorough views of products before they buy, so they’re less likely to return items due to unforeseen surprises.
Employing the Right Platform is Critical
Before deploying video, you’ll need to make sure your platform can support playback—otherwise your customers may experience slower load times, glitches, and unsightly error messages. Cloud-based ecommerce solutions like Shopify have the bandwidth and flexibility to enhance the user experience with embedded videos. Some modern platforms can also integrate with video-friendly social media sites so customers can view your content and make a purchase in their favorite apps.
It’s an exciting time to be at the intersection of ecommerce and video. Here are a few key ways to integrate product videos into online sales.
Demonstrating Products
The most obvious use for video is to supplement (or even replace) product photos on listings. Let’s say you’re a customer shopping for an outfit to wear to an upcoming wedding. You don’t have time to run all over town finding the perfect piece, but you also don’t want to receive your new garment a few days before the big event only to learn it fits poorly or appears completely different than it did online.
Savvy websites will post a brief clip of a model moving around in the clothing (including a full spin). As Econsultancy reports, beachwear brand Simply Beach incorporated this technique and saw a 20 percent increase in conversions and a five percent decrease in returns.
Offering Category Overviews
Users generally navigate to a relevant category after landing on your homepage. Greet them (and reward their click) with a quality video. Creating SEO-friendly category pages for product lines with embedded video will earn you favorable search engine clout and give your customers a taste of the shopping adventures to come.
Providing Valuable Tutorials
Product videos are a great place to show customers how your products work together. What problems can they solve? How can your buyers put them to use in their daily lives? Why is your new item a must-have? What bundles of products work intuitively together? A well produced tutorial video will address all of these questions and more.
Address your customers’ “how-to questions” in video form. They’ll be appreciative and much more likely to pick up the products at hand. Crowdsource customer questions for video inspiration. Pro tip: Post these videos in your social media feeds and on your YouTube channel for extra bang for your buck.
Creating engaging product videos for ecommerce is just a matter of getting creative with your content and your placement. You’ll boost conversion rates, help eliminate customer confusion and establish your brand as a trailblazer in your category.