Using eCommerce Video to Drive Conversion

Marketers are accustomed to capturing attention and conveying messages with sleek visuals, but few are taking advantage of the massive opportunity to drive conversion by incorporating video content marketing into the eCommerce customer journey. Video is perhaps the most intricate, flexible, and convincing communication medium marketers have at their disposal.

The research is unanimous—using video across the eCom experience will increase brand awareness, generate more traffic, and drive visitors to convert.

Learn More: Social Media Video Ad Specs & Placements Guide

The eCommerce Path to Purchase

There are ample opportunities across the marketing funnel to optimize your customers’ online journey with video to more effectively attract prospects and drive them from discovery to consideration to purchase and then turn them into returning customers.

When it comes to Search, often the first stop on the path-to-purchase, videos optimize your webpages and increase your chances of capturing that #1 SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking. A business is 53x more likely to appear on the first page of Google results if it utilizes video on its webpage (Forrester Research) and including video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic (Brightcove). Google’s search algorithm is still largely a mystery, but it’s clear that it rewards media-diverse pages that incorporate video (which increases time spent on page—a metric that’s part of the algorithm) with text and static images.

Once a user has landed on your website, video will lengthen their stay by 2 minutes on average—according to Comscore—and drive metrics across your site. Including video on landing pages increases conversions by at least 80% (Insivia) and customers are 64-85% more likely to purchase after watching a product video on your PDPs, or Product Detail Page (that range represents differences based on customer age).

Stripped of the ability to physically pick up or explore your product in a digital environment, customers can dive more deeply into your offering through video. Zappos does this particularly well as a digital-only retailer: most of their products have accompanying videos that feature a representative showcasing various product features and giving viewers a guided 360-degree tour of each shoe or accessory. Bandier is another example, incorporating videos into their PDPs to give a more comprehensive perspective of their product—one that gives their prospect a deeper understanding of their offering than a 2D image can provide. Both of these examples seamlessly create an online shopping experience that feels far more dynamic and human than a static page and increases conversion as a result.

RELATED: How to Turn Photos into Video Ads That Stand Out

Your product doesn’t have to be demonstrable for your eCommerce video production to have an impact. Take a recent case study: QuickFrame brought static assets to life for OLLY, presenting their vitamins and supplements in a visually and sonically appealing way. OLLY was so pleased with the results that it subsequently expanded its use of video on other 3rd party retailer product pages, improving the brand’s content quality score across .com partners, such as Target.

Learn more about our work with OLLY.

After a customer has purchased, you can continue to utilize video to drive repeat purchases and increase LTV. Consider incorporating video in your email marketing campaigns to sustain a consumer connection with your brand. Videos will lead customers back to your site: Implix reported a 96% increase in click-through rate when “video” was featured in the subject line.

eCom Video: The Takeaway

eCommerce continues to grow annually, grabbing a larger share of total retail sales each year (18.0% in the fourth quarter of 2019). Those numbers are almost guaranteed to seriously skew in favor of eCom in 2020 considering the lifestyle changes we’ve had to make as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Add to that consideration the serious financial struggles major retailers are reporting and we’re due for a huge eCom surge driven by the move of consumer shopping online.

With more retail moving online, you must provide delightful eCom experiences that make your brand stand out and showcase your product. Video is a surefire, proven way to capture attention, engage your consumer, and make the sale.