5 Best Online Marketplaces for eCommerce Video

Since the financial crisis of 2008, eCommerce retail sales have steadily been on the rise. But when the cataclysmic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic prevented consumers from visiting retail stores, eCommerce shopping on first-party sites and online marketplaces boomed.

Digital Commerce 360 reported that consumers spent $861.02 billion in 2020, an increase of 40% YoY. Slowly, eCommerce is swallowing in-person shopping, as it now accounts for 21.3% of total retail sales. This is the largest increase in eCommerce sales in at least two decades.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an independent startup or an Enterprise power player, if you sell a product, eCommerce video production must be a pillar of your business strategy. Last year proved that online shopping is the preferred destination for consumers, and you can meet their demands by expanding your presence into top online marketplaces.

The largest online marketplaces, like Amazon and Walmart, offer different media placements that can help your brand and products truly stand out. Some even allow businesses to open dedicated digital storefronts that can show off an entire catalog in a dynamic way. And because video is the most effective form of communication today, if you want to create a unique brand experience while driving sales, you need to lean on product video placements that will bridge the gap between in-person and online shopping.

Let’s dive into some of the biggest online marketplaces to pinpoint some of the unique ways you can specifically leverage video content to help your brand compete with some of the biggest retailers around.

Learn More: Social Media Video Ad Specs & Placements Guide

Top Online Marketplaces: Using Video to Stand Out

Videos can be integrated into multiple sections of an eCommerce marketplace, but the most common placement is on your product detail pages. These videos can give consumers a more tactile understanding of your product and its value propositions, driving conversions and inspiring curious shoppers to become loyal customers.

These are the best online marketplaces that you can leverage with video content:

1) Amazon

Amazon needs no introduction. As the number one eCommerce retailer in the country, they are the destination for online shopping today, and they have the statistics to prove it. In 2020, Amazon accounted for 31.4% of total eCommerce spending. You likely can’t match the extensive reach that Amazon has, but leveraging their marketplace will give you access to their wide range of consumers. 

KEY TRENDS: Driving Amazon Sales with Video

Their solution for online retailers is Amazon Stores, a digital storefront where brands can customize the way they present their line of products. In an Amazon Store, you can add images and videos that give consumers a 360-degree look at your product that highlights unique features to entice customers to make a purchase. You can also add sizzle reels to your storefronts to give consumers an understanding of your brand identity and feel. 

Amazon offers three main video placements on its platform:

Video Tiles

Amazon Stores are composed of multiple rich media tiles that enhance the look and feel of your digital storefront. When a shopper clicks on a Video Tile, it will pop up on a different screen where they can play or pause the video, control the volume, or resize it to full screen.

Any video type can work as a tile, but we recommend product videos as they perform best on Amazon. Consider the ways Video Tiles can support your normal static product images. Consumers already know what your product looks like, so rather than showing off your sleek design, use video to demonstrate the product’s functionality or highlight features that are exclusive to the item.

Background Video Modules

Amazon “remodeled” Stores in 2020, adding a background video module that lives on your Stores homepage. These videos will auto-play (with sound-off) and loop, adding engaging dynamism to the visual look of your Store. 

You’ll want to grab attention immediately by placing your video content at the top of the page so it appears before a user scrolls down. Keep your videos to five or six seconds and be aware of when your video loops to ensure smooth transitions.

Product Detail Pages

Embed videos directly into your product detail pages to provide extra context into the features that make your offering unique. These product-focused videos will appear in the media carousel on the left-hand side of the details page.

PRODUCT VIDEOS: 5 Best eCommerce Product Videos to Boost Conversions

You can also add video content under the “From the Manufacturer” section on the product details page. This is the perfect place to add lifestyle videos or brand sizzle reels. These types of videos are great ways to inspire relatability in your target audience, giving them not only an understanding of your brand but the community they’ll be a part of after purchase. 

Best Practice Tip: It can be difficult to set yourself apart from competitors on Amazon PDPs because of its universal UI. Including both product and brand videos on your PDPs helps you differentiate and helps deliver your hallmark brand experience on the platform. 

This video from YNM lives on their product detail page and uses a narrative to uniquely show the physical and emotional benefits of their weighted blanket. 

2) Walmart

Walmart touts itself as being the largest physical retailer in the world, and according to Statista, it has also become the second-largest eCommerce marketplace, trailing Amazon. During the 2020 pandemic, eCommerce sales on Walmart’s online marketplace grew 79%, and in concurrence with recent trends, that number will only increase over the next few years.

Walmart sees over 110 million shoppers per month on its website, which means there is a tremendous amount of potential to get your offerings in front of a lot of eyes. Through Walmart’s Seller Central portal, brands can customize their product detail pages with rich media integrations to enhance the customer experience. 

Walmart offers two main video placements on its marketplace:

Product Detail Pages

Adding a video to your product detail page can demonstrate the benefits of the product you are selling in a hands-off way. These videos can live in two distinct places. 

The first is a link underneath your featured product image that will open in a new frame that can put a spotlight on unique features. The second is under the “About This Item” section at the bottom of the page where you can provide additional context about your product, like How-To videos showing customers your product in action.

Interactive Videos

Interactive videos enhance the customer experience by allowing buyers to interact with a product video. They will be prompted to click on different features to learn more about the product’s functionality and how it works. 

This is an eye-catching way to engage new and existing customers in a unique experience where they can have a tactile understanding of the benefits your product provides. Interactive videos are a great stand-in for the in-person shopping experience of checking out products on the shelves.

Best Practice Tip: Even though Walmart sells veritably everything through their online store, 56% of their total sales came from groceries in 2020. This means that if you are selling a grocery product, your brand will benefit from having a big presence on the platform.

This example from COOLA showcases their suncare products with relatable talent that makes their video feel less “salesy” and more authentic to their target audience.

3) The Home Depot

The Home Depot isn’t an online marketplace for every business, but if you sell home improvement products, they must be listed on their eCommerce platform. As the pandemic cemented new consumer behaviors as more people stayed at home, eCommerce boomed for The Home Depot, increasing online sales by 80% when compared with 2019.

The Home Depot offers two main video placements on their platform:

Media Carousel

Product videos can be part of the media carousel consumers see when they first click through to your product page. When you click on a video, it will pop out into a new frame where you can see additional product videos and images. This is a great placement to give a 360-degree view of your product or highlight specific features with a product explainer video.

Product Highlights

The product highlights section is directly underneath the featured media carousel. This placement is a great way to draw attention to additional value propositions for your product. You can engage consumers with instructional videos that demonstrate how to install or use key features of the product. 

Best Practice Tip: Because The Home Depot customers have specific interests or projects in mind, you can be more granular in your creative approach to cater to their needs. Use talent in your videos that The Home Depot’s core consumers can relate to, like homeowners or home improvement professionals.

Need help making videos? See how our video production platform can help your business.

This high-gloss commercial from Palmolive uses voice over and on-screen text to communicate key benefits consumers will receive from their product.

4) Wayfair

With over 20 million active users, Wayfair is one of the largest online-only retailers on the internet. Wayfair experienced strong growth through 2020 as consumers were heavily investing in home furnishing as the world began working from home, and that growth is expected to continue through 2021.

Wayfair offers two main video placements on their platform:

Brand Pages

Wayfair allows sellers to create Brand pages where an entire product catalogue can live. You can nestle video content within product listing tiles to call out your brand’s identity or core values through a lifestyle video or brand sizzle reel. You can also include a Shop the Video link that will allow customers to directly purchase the products that are featured in these videos. 

Product Detail Pages

You can add video content to the media carousel customers see when navigating to an individual product detail page. While this is a great way to showcase the unique features of your products, we recommend placing how-to videos here to show your product in action, bringing a bit of that in-person shopping experience to the digital sphere. 

Videos can also be added to the highlights section underneath the media carousel to provide even more content to contextualize the usefulness of your product.

Best Practice Tip: Think of your Brand page like a digital extension of your in-person showroom. Custom your video content to inspire the feeling you want your customers to have when they step foot into a brick and mortar, whether it’s with a product focus video, a How-to explainer, or a brand video. Because of the variety of places you can add videos, you should experiment with different types and formats to see what works best. 

Testimonial videos, like this one from Casper, are a great way to demonstrate the benefits of your product and inspire relatability by leaning on real life customers and their personal experiences to drive the narrative.

5) Etsy

In 2020, Etsy more than doubled its gross merchandise sales to an impressive $10.3 billion dollars. If you want a slice of those profits, you need to leverage this online marketplace for the creatively inclined. 

Larger enterprise organizations may not find Etsy to be the right fit for their offerings, but if you are a small business with bespoke products, you can find a lot of success engaging Etsy’s base of over 39.4 million active users.

Etsy offers two main video placements on its platform:

Shop Videos

The About section in your Etsy Shop is where you can tell your potential customers everything they need to know about your business, your products, and your creative process. You can support your organizational story with Shop Videos that allow potential buyers to put a face to the brand name, inspiring confidence and giving them a richer understanding of your company’s identity and values.

Product Listings

Listing videos give potential buyers an extra layer of tactile understanding about your product before making a purchase. These videos will appear beneath your static images on a product detail page. Etsy says that the best listing videos are those that show your product in use or address common questions associated with the item.

Best Practice Tip: Etsy is a platform for artisans and those who love them, so use listing videos to highlight the creative details of your products. As Etsy states, “A driving force for many consumers buying handmade products is a respect and appreciation for the creative process.” Combined with relatable talent, you can make engaging videos that resonate with the site’s unique consumer base. 

Commercials like this one from Bird are perfect for Shop Videos because they not only show off their new product, but use narrative storytelling to position themselves as a family-friendly brand.

Online Marketplaces & eCommerce Retail Video Placements: The Takeaway

It may seem obvious now, but it bears repeating: eCommerce is the future of retail sales. Don’t believe us? Just look at the numbers around the increase in eCommerce sales from 2019 to 2020. That colossal increase proves that eCommerce isn’t a fad: it’s changing retail forever. 

Brands will only continue to double down on eCommerce in the coming years. If you want to boost your reach and maximize your potential to find new customers you must have a dynamic presence on the top online marketplaces.

But you can’t just list your items and call it a day! By leveraging the engaging power of video, you can bridge the gap between online and in-person shopping, giving consumers a unique customer experience they can begin associating with your brand’s online identity. Video is the way we communicate in the modern world, so by going all-in on video content, you’ll have a leg up on the competition as the race for retail dominance rages on.

PLAN: 5 Best eCommerce Product Videos to Boost Conversions