For many people, online shopping has become a way of life, offering accessibility, comfort, and freedom of choice to buy anything they want—convenience personified.
While this soaring popularity of eCommerce has benefitted shoppers in many ways, it has made the industry more competitive than ever for sellers. eCommerce brands now have to compete for shoppers’ (shrinking) attention, deliver instant value, and nudge them to place an order.
Traditional marketing channels and video marketing tools aren’t built for this type of heavy lifting. But shoppable videos are.
A shoppable video allows viewers to watch the product in action and buy it with a single-click checkout process. Plus, this video can be embedded and hosted anywhere—social media platforms, SMS, email, QR codes, websites, and more. So, it’s a win-win for both shoppers and sellers.
Since 85% of consumers worldwide find videos essential as they shop online, integrating clickable purchase links in your videos is a decisive move. The video tells shoppers everything they want about your brand, and the link reduces the friction in placing an order.
Instead of flooding target buyers’ social feeds with flashy retargeting ads, merchants can encourage product discovery, maximize engagement, and drive sales meaningfully by delivering immersive experiences with shoppable videos.
From Inspiration to Purchase: How Shoppable Videos are Transforming eCommerce Video Marketing
The demand for video marketing has only grown bigger over the years. With 91% of businesses planning to use video as a marketing tool in 2023, one thing is clear: you need something extraordinary to stand out with your video strategy.
For eCommerce businesses, shoppable videos are the winning formula to cut through the noise and gain visibility among their target buyers. Here are a few ways I think interactive videos can give online sellers an edge over the rest:
- Inform and engage shoppers better
One of the biggest downsides of online shopping is not knowing what the product looks or feels like in real life. This is where shoppable videos can help brands win since seven in ten customers agree that watching a product video helps them understand the product better and make an informed purchase decision.
Besides bringing a product to life, shoppable videos also give buyers the convenience of visiting your product page, checking all attributes, and placing an order in one click. The more intriguing and unique your videos are, the more viewers you can reel in and convert into customers.
Artsabers, an online store selling the iconic Star Wars lightsabers, proved the promise of customer engagement through its interactive video campaign. They partnered with Videowise to create an immersive shopping experience for their target audience. The campaign produced excellent results, with over €1.1M in video sales.
More importantly, the brand saw a 28% jump in its engagement rate, with an average watch time per shopper of 3 minutes and 33 seconds.
- Minimize purchase friction
Shoppable videos offer a massive advantage to sellers struggling with high cart abandonment rates. In most cases, sellers can’t figure out the reason(s) why shoppers leave at the last minute without finishing their order. It could be a connectivity issue, a change of mind, or an extensive checkout process. There’s an 80% chance that it’s the latter.
But the golden rule is: the quicker you help shoppers check out, the more sales you’ll get. Interactive videos help you achieve exactly that. Instead of making them go through a multi-step checkout process, simplify it to a watch-and-buy process to reduce friction.
- Leverage UGC to earn trust capital
eCommerce business owners and retailers also have the unique opportunity to build goodwill for their brands and drive conversions through shoppable videos. A surefire way to accomplish this is converting user-generated content, success stories, and customer testimonials into video content with shoppable links.
This tactic can work wonders for brands with a significant market presence and good reputation. They can use an eCommerce video platform like Videowise to find UGC anywhere on the internet and turn this content into shoppable videos.
Since potential shoppers already know your brand, they’ll feel more confident buying from you with this social proof. It adds more authenticity and credibility to your brand name, simplifying the decision-making process for shoppers.
- Deliver an immersive and intuitive experience
Shoppable videos go beyond digital storefronts, static posts, and mainstream videos to replicate the in-store experience for shoppers. They get a 360-degree view of the product and see it in action to understand its dimensions, use case, functionality, and more.
This immersive experience can eliminate doubts holding shoppers back from purchasing a product. It also gives you a competitive edge to justify higher pricing since buyers can see what they’re going for.
Apolla’s ROI from shoppable videos is a prime example of how these videos can effectively present your value proposition and convince visitors to buy. The apparel and footwear brand leveraged Videowise’s high-touch, white-glove service to convert its UGC into shoppable videos and achieve a 9.94% conversion rate.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claidiu Cioba, Founder and CEO of Videowise
Claudiu Cioba is the Founder and CEO of Videowise, a revolutionary eCommerce video platform. With over 15 years of experience in product design and engineering, Claudiu has worked with a wide range of startups and top brands such as Uber, PayJunction & Certa.
His data-driven approach to product development enables him to transform complex problems into simplified customer experiences. Having honed his craft as a User Interface (UI) designer over the past 14 years, he’s worked with leading companies such as Uber, PayJunction, and Certa in addition to managing lead product design roles within prominent startups including Friend.ly – later acquired by Facebook.
With the increasing popularity of videos, Claudiu launched Videowise in April 2021 to provide eCommerce businesses with an all-in-one solution for creating engaging videos through a shoppable experience.