Do you think creating videos for your e-commerce store is too much trouble or not worth the investment? What if I told you that using such a “cinematic” experience is an ideal way to engross your customers and boost your conversion rates? Read on, and let me know what you think!
Product videos not only create brand awareness, but also instill top of mind recall to your target audience. People only remember 20% what they hear, 30% what they see and 70% of what they hear and see. Videos form part of a highly impactful variety of content, which is consumed by invested visitors to your site. In fact, 73% more visitors end up purchasing products after watching a video. Viewer impact is not the only benefit that you gain. More than half of American shoppers polled by Animoto, say they trust companies that have product videos.
Still not convinced about the utility of video? From an SEO perspective, both Google and Bing are building towards including video in search results. In fact, a Search Engine Land study reveals that we can see close to 14% of the search result real estate devoted to video! Think of the opportunities lost if your products do not feature in that 14% of space.
What goes into the making of a video? You may wish to consider the following before you begin your shoot:
- Leverage, interactive, and collaborative features that invite viewers to participate in your story.
- Simplify complex processes with a detailed step by step explainer video
- Use a conversational tone and script that your audience can relate to.
- Use concise messages that emphasize your point quickly that your audience can easily grasp
- Considering the attention span of an individual is just ‘9 secs’, the screenplay should be tight.
- Plan carefully; pick your location, know your schedule and have the right people available.
Now that you’ve invested the time, effort and money into creating this great content, what should you do next to maximize the impact?
- Seed it in any content platform, such as your website, blog or other third party audiovisual platforms like YouTube or Vimeo
- Make sure your video can be easily viewed on all devices
- Include a transcript; search engines aren’t as proficient at indexing video content as they are with text
- Make it shareable on social media platforms
- And, of course, ensure its loaded onto the e-commerce platforms you’re selling the products
The power of video for e-commerce is simply too great to ignore. They increase the stickiness of visitors, increase conversions and help boost consumer confidence. Leveraging this strategy for your e-commerce website will help your sales revenue as well as branding. Feel free to sound off in the comments – how has video helped your business? What challenges have you faced in producing videos?
In our next post, we will focus on specific things you should keep in mind while producing video content designed to promote your products.
