How to Use Ecommerce Video to Boost Conversion Rates

The average e-commerce store may struggle to keep up as more and more brick-and-mortar giants transform to fit the increasingly online world. E-commerce won’t go anywhere any time soon. As a matter of fact, analysts predict online retail revenue to continue to rise, exceeding $1.3 trillion by 2025.

The experience your brand offers is more important than ever, with consumers increasingly spoiled for choice. One second might be all you have to capture their attention while scrolling through Instagram or opening an email.

In the meantime, you are running an entire e-commerce website, fulfilling orders, managing shipments, and making strategic decisions at every step. Marketing may not be at the top of your priority list as a business owner.

Don’t worry; this article is not meant to bum you out. We’re here to show you how to use a specific strategy to help your chances of standing out from the crowd — adding videos to your site.

You can boost sales and increase brand awareness by creating videos for your e-commerce website. Learn how below.

Reasons Why Video Is Important To E-commerce?

Video is a vital tool for e-commerce businesses. It helps to provide a better shopping experience for potential customers by allowing them to better understand the product before making a purchase.

In contrast to brick-and-mortar stores, customers can not touch the electronic commerce product before purchasing. However, videos solve this issue by showing products in motion, providing customers with a clear sense of their appearance, texture, and functionality in daily usage.

Types of E-commerce Videos Which Your Business Should Use

There are several types of videos that e-commerce businesses can use to promote their products and services. Here are some of the most popular types of e-commerce videos:

Product spotlight videos

Product spotlights provide customers with an up-close look at the items they are considering for purchase. These visual showcases go beyond glances, providing a tactile sense of a product’s texture and materials, effectively compensating for the lack of physical touch in online shopping.

Take, for instance, the sophisticated approach adopted by industry leader Apple in its e-commerce strategy. The strategic rotation of these devices on screen not only highlights clean edges but also allows potential buyers to discover themselves virtually in the product’s design intricacies.

Well-crafted product spotlight videos bridge the gap between the digital and physical, offering a tangible product experience without in-store shopping. Customers can now imagine how they might feel and find out the delicate nuances that might be overlooked in static images.

Lifestyle videos

Lifestyle videos provide authentic portrayals of people combining products into their daily routines. By showcasing practical product use, these videos help customers imagine how the items can meet their day-to-day needs. This form of marketing helps promote products effectively and establish a stronger connection between consumers and the brand.

For instance, if your product line includes waterproof hiking boots, a compelling video could show a hiker confidently walking through deep puddles, concluding with the satisfaction of dry socks upon boot removal. This not only demonstrates the product’s functionality but also resounds with potential customers on a practical level.

Therefore, it is necessary to develop lifestyle videos relatable to your target audience, generating excitement about the specific ways our product will enhance daily experiences.

Product demonstrations

One of the most effective ways to use eCommerce videos is with product demonstrations. Infomercials, a time-tested strategy applied for products like Oxiclean and Ginsu knives, affirm the persuasive strength of showcasing a product in action. Seeing a product in action far exceeds merely listing product features in a bullet-point format.

Product demonstration videos help you to emphasize specific product advantages, illustrating to potential customers the tangible ways that products can enhance their lives.

Enterprises such as MUDWTR use simple product demonstration videos proficiently on their home pages. It provides a strategy for the process of conceiving their signature drink, including showing how to make their drink, what the beverage looks like, and how easy it is to start your day with it.

Video ads

Numerous eCommerce brands have achieved outstanding success by investing in personality-infused promotional videos. Take, for example, Dollar Shave Club, whose venturesome yet memorable ad campaign became a household name to overnight stardom.

If your budget permits, you should use video advertisements that effectively sell your products and contribute significantly to building brand loyalty.

Tutorials

Tutorials are a highly effective method to describe how products are used, guiding the target audience to achieve precise outcomes.

Particularly beneficial for customers in the research stage, these instructional guides instill confidence by ensuring users can accomplish what they want with your products.

Noteworthy is the role of tutorials in reducing product returns and decreasing potential confusion or annoyance customers may encounter while using your products.

Testimonials (review videos)

Using testimonial videos strategically can enhance sales, overcome objections, and, most importantly, build trust in customers.

These testimonial videos are often short videos. In video testimonials, individuals capture their experience with the product or service, their opinions, and why they recommend others buy it. People tend to trust a verified reviewer.

Unboxing Video

Ever wonder why people love watching online shopping hauls? Those are unboxing videos! They show what a product looks like when you get it delivered, including the packaging and any extras. People love them because they answer questions you might have when buying online, like how well it’s packed or if it comes with a manual. The more shoppers know, the more likely they are to buy!

For an unboxing video that grabs viewers, keep it real! Show the whole process, from the packaging to the wrapping paper, and don’t be shy about using scissors! Viewers want to relate and imagine themselves doing the same thing at home. Plus, good news – unboxing videos are super popular on YouTube, just like reviews, so finding content for your products is a breeze!

How to Use Video to Sell More Through Your E-Commerce Store

According to studies, adding video to your website can improve conversions by almost 80%. The great news is you can hire many trusted video production companies to help you implement this proven marketing tactic.

Whether you choose to hire outside help or go at it alone with recording video, using AI tools like text to voice generators and video makers, etc. Utilizing the following tips and tricks will enable you to get the most out of your investment. Let’s begin!

1. Engage Your Audience by Sharing Your Story

With a video telling your company’s origin story or purpose, your “About” page will undoubtedly stand out, and potential customers will likely spend more time on it. Moreover, creating a narrative for your e-commerce business will be a marketing asset that you can keep using for years to come.

The following are some ways to make the most out of your “About” video:

• Include it in the “Welcome” email you send to new customers or prospects.

• Use it to give prospective employees a taste of your company’s mission in job descriptions and hiring announcements.

• Add it to social media posts that correspond to human-centered announcements, such as partnerships or initiatives.

Remember, an “About” video is typically created as part of a more extensive campaign to showcase not only the company’s products but also its mission and vision. The purpose of these videos is to intrigue and attract your target audience while building awareness of your company.

2. Repurpose Your Shareable Social-Media Videos

In this day and age, you need to make an impact on all of the major channels to win over consumers who can shop from their phones — anytime, anywhere. Videos have a high engagement rate on platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram: all places where your e-commerce products might be featured.

Besides being repurposed for paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram, videos posted on social media can also be reused on your website itself. Combine a few pay-per-click ads into a product video or turn a sponsored Instagram Story into a tutorial to maximize your ROI.

3. Address the Audience’s Pain Points and Answer Questions

Transparency matters to consumers more than ever before. The public holds brands accountable and rewards businesses with a purpose other than making money.

Create how-to guides, tutorials, and FAQ videos to answer your customer’s questions in an engaging, honest, and informative way. You can utilize these in your e-commerce marketing efforts in the following ways:

• Include tutorial videos on product pages so customers can use them to assemble any products they need quickly.

• Upload the videos on Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms to make them easily accessible in a pinch.

• Once an order has been shipped, email the customer a video showing them how to assemble the product.

Videos that help solve problems for your customers will show them how much you care, which is always a good thing.

4. Allow Testimonials to Do the Selling for You

If you’re just getting started in e-commerce, marketing yourself can be challenging. The best marketing strategies require a bit of bragging, especially if you’re doing something others can’t. This may not be in your nature, and that’s perfectly understandable.

Here is where testimonial videos come in. Marketing your e-commerce store with testimonial videos can provide a couple of crucial benefits:

1. By strategically placing testimonial videos on product pages, you can drive hesitant buyers further down the sales funnel. If clicking the “Add to Cart” button is the next action you want them to take, this is a powerful tool.

2. Providing social proof reinforces your credibility and positions your product or service as the ideal solution to a customer’s need or desire. The following tips will help you market your e-commerce business with testimonial videos:

• Make use of someone else’s testimonial when asking a new customer for their own review. Bonus points if you offer incentives like discounts or free shipping for reviews — talk about building customer loyalty.

• Use email to remind abandoned cart users to complete their purchases. You can demonstrate just how much they’re missing out on by using testimonial-driven marketing!

• Include a few video testimonials in your social media accounts to show how happy people are with your store.

5. Boost Your Email Marketing Efforts

The number of e-mails sent and received per day was estimated at approximately 306.4 billion in 2020; however, this number is projected to increase to over 376.4 billion by 2025, so you may wonder how to stand out?

There’s nothing better than an email with an engaging subject line, meaningful content, and cool graphics, especially if it announces a big sale at your favorite store. The problem is that this is not always enough to generate a sale.

Like salting your food, video can add flavor to your email marketing if you add a little bit at a time. And you’ll know when you’ve gone too far, almost on instinct. If not, your analytics will be quick to let you know.

You don’t need to send a video in every email, but here are some situations in which one might be helpful:

• When telling a human-centered brand story. This is an effective way to build relationships with your customers (video can help you do this).

• When the founder or CEO of the company has an important message to share.

• When launching a new product or a seasonal campaign.

Incorporating strategies like downloading online videos can further enhance your approach. This provides an additional option for those who may prefer to download and watch the video at their convenience.

6. Add Product Videos to Landing Pages to Make Them Pop

Consumers report that product videos increase their trust in a purchase in 57% of cases. That alone should convince you to use them on your site. The good news is that you can customize product videos to meet the needs of your different marketing campaigns.

These are three of the most common product video types:

1. Tutorials — These videos allow you to demonstrate the real-world applications of your product. In addition, depending on the tutorial, they can easily be turned into DIY videos for sharing on social media.

2. Comparisons — These show the customers how one product compares to another. Despite your (undeniable) bias toward your products, comparison videos are most effective when they demonstrate drastic differences between your offerings and those of your competitors.

3. Explainers — Your explainer videos should spend a lot of time detailing your product’s features and what differentiates it from the competition. Their purpose is to help those who want to know everything before purchasing.

7. Build a Video Section for Your Site

With all your product videos in one place, prospective customers don’t have to search for them. You can still use videos on individual e-commerce pages, but make sure they are given a separate area to live and breathe.

You could collect your product videos in a few places. If you’re an e-commerce retailer, you could have a dedicated section on your website, but YouTube is also an excellent place to start.

8. Add a CTA to Each Video

You can encourage buyers to purchase by using call-to-actions during and after your video. When someone has just watched your product video, keep the momentum going and encourage them to buy while they are in the mood to do so.

Most product videos produced by merchants are assumed to be displayed in the context of the product detail page, and, therefore, a call-to-action is implicit. However, when an online retailer aggregates product videos in galleries, on YouTube, or in some other way, the product videos will need to contain a standalone call-to-action that encourages consumers to make a purchase.

There are a couple of ways to include calls to action. Depending on the video content, the customer may be asked to buy directly within the video, or you may use an overlay to make the pitch.

9. Use a Larger Player

This one may seem a bit off at first glance, but it is backed up by actual data from none other than Google.

A report entitled “Are Your Video Ads Making an Impression?,” published by Think with Google, examined a measurement used by the Interactive Advertising Bureau known as a “viewable video impression.” A video ad is considered viewable if half of its pixels can be seen for at least two consecutive seconds.

Google tried to determine what made a video advertisement more viewable using this definition. One would hope that customers are willing to look at more than half the available pixels for more than two seconds when watching an e-commerce product video.

Whatever the case, the same things that make online video ads viewable might also apply to videos in general.

The researchers at Google, for example, found that, on average, people watched more video advertisements when they were displayed on relatively large screens.

For the video players measured, video viewability rates were above 80% for sizes greater than 640 pixels by 480 pixels. For example, 848 x 477-pixel players had an average video viewability rate of 88.6%.

By contrast, the most common player size for video ads — 300 x 250 — resulted in the lowest video viewability rate with just 19.8%.

In the case of video ads, this data is interesting since Google drew from a sample of ads shown across a wide range of platforms.

This data does not deal with e-commerce website videos directly. Still, it is fair to assume that there is at least some overlap between the factors that make a video ad viewable and those that encourage online shoppers to watch a video. If this is the case, it is worth giving your product videos a bit more on-page real estate.

10. Make Sure Your Video Is at the Center of the Screen

In the same study, Google found that the placement of video players affected video ad viewability. The highest video viewability rates were achieved when videos were positioned in the middle of the frame and within 250 pixels of the top of the page.

If video ads work similarly to e-commerce product videos, placing video players in a prominent position on your product detail pages might make sense. Online retailers may be able to manage video positions by sharing space with the main product image.

Wrapping Up

Nowadays, it’s pretty crowded online, and a good video marketing strategy is essential to getting your brand noticed. Although it may seem overwhelming to get started with video marketing, you can create e-commerce videos for all marketing channels and platforms without being a pro video editor.

With today’s software and tools, video marketing is available to marketers of all skill levels. In a few clicks (and a little elbow grease), you can make your homepage a showcase of your product, then sit back and watch sales grow.

While video marketing can seem daunting at first, it can be easily accomplished with a bit of practice and patience. Now is the time to make video a key component of your marketing campaign. Take it step by step and keep learning. There is no way of knowing how a new idea or strategy will help you reach your goals.