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Research shows that consumers rely on product video in making online purchase decisions. Online retailers are moving fast to add video to the purchase path in order to increase conversion. With this goal in mind, here are some best practices we’ve adopted in the course of working with our Internet 500 retailer clients at Invodo.
1) Make the Product the Star
A common mistake in eCommerce video is focusing too much on the spokesperson and not enough on the product. Highlight the features that are going to help your audience make a buying decision. We follow a 90 percent product, 10 percent presenter rule.
2) Start with the Right Products
How much of your catalog can you cover? For retailers that have large catalogs in multiple categories, where to start a video campaign is a tough decision. Start with products that are at the intersection of high profit margin and popularity. If you can’t cover an entire category at once, at least cover the top sellers in that category. Consistent use of video within a category gives customers a more consistent experience.
3) Free Isn’t Cheap
A common misconception is that creating video in-house is less expensive than working with a partner. But post-production and content management quickly become full-time jobs for an internal team that will then find itself unable to scale the program up.
Focus on the ROI and you’ll likely find that working with a full-service eCommerce video partner drives higher results more cost-effectively. That partner should be able to cover 500 products or more in as little as 10 days.
4) A Retail Site Deserves a Retail Video Platform
In retail, the video player matters. An embedded YouTube player degrades the customer experience and squanders video SEO benefit. Many online video platforms are loaded with features that are at best irrelevant to eCommerce and may even distract shoppers or weigh down page load times.
A retail-focused player will provide full SEO credit and have a minimal footprint to enhance page load times. It will also be fully customizable to become a seamless part of your customer experience. Most importantly, the features will be retail-specific, such as ‘Add to Cart’ buttons and features to enable cross-sell and up-sell.
5) Merchandise Front and Center
If your video implementation is an afterthought, the impact of your video will be, too. Placement is important. The video should be front and center for your customers. Video above the fold or even in the “hero position” (where the product image might typically be displayed) will be viewed more often and help drive more sales.
Video is changing eCommerce right now and the only real mistake is to delay getting started. These best practices are just the tip of the iceberg, but if you plan a video program with these principles in mind, you’ll get off on the right foot in driving conversion.
5 Comments
Agree with many of the points mentioned by Craig. I know on eBags.com where we have over 350 videos we receive many customer comments in testimonials saying how the video sold them on the product. There are several products where our eBags product designer walks shoppers through why he added certain features and viewers love hearing it straight from the designer. eBags TLS Mother Lode Jr and eBags TLS Workstation are two such products.
Hosting/streaming product videos is another issue that needs to be considered. An average e-tailer on virtual or shared hosting is better off using third-party streaming servers. In terms of ROI and visitor engagement, we see that interactive product views are equally important to our customers as product videos.
Videos are really what make products sell because they can see the product not just pictures. Of course since YouTube became a hit, videos are viral especially if you have a very appealing video. Humor sometimes mixed with product info becomes interesting.
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