The Power of Video in Ecommerce

Every marketer today knows that if they want to take their business to the next level they must integrate video into their marketing mix. From social content to emails, video is the most engaging way to tell your brand’s story or reach your audience through social channels.

For an eCommerce store, creating quality videos can be a challenge. It used to be the case that this was often an expensive and time-consuming endeavour. These days, given how affordable high-definition video cameras are and the fact that almost everyone has a very capable smartphone with a HD camera, producing simple quality videos is a much more achievable goal.

In the age of visualisation, however, it’s clear that any time and money spent on this endeavour is well worth the investment. Here are a few reasons why video is so powerful:

Most engaging medium

According to Hubspot, 73% of visitors that watch your product videos will buy your product, and social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined. The amount of time users spend watching videos on the internet continues to creep up, as it takes little effort and is usually a much better way to share information, that might usually be dismissed if conveyed through text. This is particularly useful if you have products with lengthy and complex descriptions. Providing a video for the product can give your customer so much more visual context.

Another way that videos are related to higher engagement rates, is by the use of instructional or tutorial videos. If relevant to your business, these are a great way to help translate technical or difficult information in an easy-to-understand, digestible format. This will work well if you have more technical products.

In some cases, you can even create an emotional connection to the product, subconsciously telling the customer how they should feel about the item. From fashion houses like Dior, to big retailers like John Lewis, everyone makes good use of videos to make consumers feel a certain way about their brand.

Video converts

Including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%. Video converts better than any other media and placing them on your landing pages is a no-brainer. As humans, we tend to look for the quickest and easiest solution, so there’s no surprise that consumers prefer to watch something over reading it. This kind of passive engagement not only increases the length of time people stay on a page, but allows the brand message on the page longer time to sink in. Furthermore, you can add a call to action (CTA) to your video – this can be permanently visible, or be shown at strategic times throughout the video, or be presented at the end. All of which will serve to an increased conversion.

After watching branded social videos, 64% of consumers are likely to make a purchase. Facebook is the most popular social channel for watching branded social videos at an engagement of 46%, followed closely by YouTube at 32%. With these statistics in mind, it goes without saying that your social media strategy should really have video built into it. You can take this one step further by using videos of products in your social media advertising, engaging customers to complete their purchases through Facebook ads.

Conclusion

Hubspot states that no other medium for content delivery delivers a more robust return on investment (ROI) than video (so long as the video is engaging, relevant and timely of course). To be successful in video-to-ROI conversion, it’s important to understand who your users are and how, when, and where they are watching these videos. Content is key.

It is still surprising that despite its huge success, video is still very underutilised in most eCommerce businesses. In today’s eCommerce reality, it’s astonishing that top name brands still don’t have videos readily available for their products. Video marketers are able to grow company revenue 49% faster year-over-year than organisations without video.

At this point, there is really no excuse, and those not utilising video must recognise that there is a clear monetary loss to the business. Video is still very much on trend and here to stay, so it’s best to jump on this huge business opportunity now!