How to Create a Shoppable Video That Converts?

So you’ve tried everything!!!

From including top-notch images to creating titles for your new eCommerce website— you’ve done it all.

Still, some pieces feel out of place. Your conversion, sales, and engagement rates are stagnant. It’s 2021, and you can easily set up a Shopify store in 8 easy steps.  

Yes, just like that. But it’s important to realize that you can rush through all the steps, do everything right and still not get the desired results. The reason being consumers are expecting new ways to interact with brands.

New e-commerce stores are dominating social media with video marketing. It makes your brand interactive, engaging and rewarding. The new interactive shoppable videos are booming in the eCommerce industry. Moreover, they can triple your conversion and engagement rates by demonstrating clear and informative product videos.

Let’s explore more about shoppable videos and how they can skyrocket your eCommerce business. 

What are Shoppable Videos?

                                                       Source: Net solutions

Shoppable videos are digital content that empowers users to shop the products as starred in the video in real-time. Thus, consumers can easily shop the products seen in the video while watching the video.

These videos unlock doors of endless opportunities for eCommerce brands. Forbes suggests that 72% of people favor discovering a product through video instead of text. 

                                                     Source: Oberlo

The best part, these people are more likely to buy this product after watching the video. The video format is attention-grabbing and convincing enough for people to make their first purchase.

With the help of a video, customers can see the diversity of products and select the perfect ones. Amazon live is a platform that takes the fun and interactive nature of live videos and combines it with online shopping. They use features like product highlighting and live promotions to boost sales and engagements.

Why are Shoppable Videos Crucial for Your Business?

 “The key is to set realistic customer expectations and then not to just meet them but exceed them preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.”— Richard Branson 

Shoppable videos create realistic expectations for your customers. It helps your audience to make smart shopping decisions. 

This improves the brand’s loyalty since now customers can see behind the scenes of your products. Your brand becomes more transparent since there’s no filter.

Even the best e-commerce platforms suggest that shoppable videos can escalate your business. So, here are a few reasons why shoppable video is crucial:

• Boost Sales: Using videos on your website’s landing page can catch customers’ attention. Recently, the award-winning automotive company Land Rover applied the same strategy. They showed the exterior part of the vehicle—including interactive buttons for consumers’ ease. 

                                        Source: Hihaho

People can click and see the details easily. This type of interactive menu helps your customer to explore the entire car in just 2 minutes. It saves time both for the users and your business. They can tap on the desired product and purchase it right away.

• Simplified Shopping Line: People love visual content, which is why it’s easy to sell visual content.

A shoppable video helps you to reduce the shopping chain for the customers. You solve the constant dilemma of people since all consumers need to do is click on the product. A popular fitness clothing brand, outdoor voices, launched a campaign known as #DoingThings.

                                                       Source: Outdoor Voices

This hashtag encourages people to do physical or outdoor activities on weekends. This message makes things clear for customers since now they can choose any exercise or comfy recreational dresses from their new collection. Mainly for a simple hike or even a short trip.

If the consumer likes your product, they can directly purchase from the video. Then add it to the shopping cart and proceed to watch the video. 

• A Robust Marketing Tool: Some brands are taking risks and going into the new age of eCommerce. Channelsight, an eCommerce intelligence platform, represented a London-based clothing brand Ted-baker. This creative brand produced a short film recently. It is based on the James Bond movie that features their latest collections.

                                                 Source: Net solutions 

Sounds exciting, right? 

                                                        Source: Giphy 

People can click on icons appearing on the clothing item and add them to their shopping bag easily. This process includes creative videos that give more cinematic feels with an element of entertainment.

This makes shoppable video a robust marketing tool that can guide your customers through every stage of buying. It also uses embedded links for instant click and purchase. On the other hand, it also helps brands replicate the customer’s experience by simplifying the buying funnel.

• Retargeting Customers: One of the most crucial aspects of a business is retargeting. Irrespective of what devices your customers use, good videos can serve them and give them a 360-degree view of every product.

Glossier’s recent campaign “Wowder featuring” is a great example. This campaign retargeted three videos for their millennial audience. The videos were deployed on their YouTube channel, website, and social media handles.

It worked like a reminder for their audiences. A clear CTA was added at the top of these videos, which would take viewers directly to the product page.

                                              Source: Eccom.design

Why Does Shoppable Video Work for eCommerce Products?

Hubspot estimates 87% of video marketers reported that video gives them a positive ROI. Below is the graph that shows the world away from the low 33% who felt that way in 2015.

                                                    Source: Hubspot

Hence, shoppable videos are the future of eCommerce marketing. It is effective because it satisfies the need for engagement and increases customer retention. 

Shoppable videos work because of these few reasons:

• It removes the gap between consuming content and buying a product. For instance, there’s no need for consumers to remember a product they like. They just need to click on the product within the video and make the decision to purchase.

• In these times, brands are rethinking maintaining a connection with their audiences. It is about both online and virtual events. The flexibility of shoppable videos is undeniable. They require interaction from the viewers, which is going to hold their attention better.

• It can be included in the advertising strategy. The reason being it helps your brand to stand out on social media. Live shoppable video is growing since eCommerce utilizes influencer marketing and social media to boost sales and product awareness. 

As per Techcrunch sources—Walmart teamed up with 10 TikTok influencers for their first live shoppable event. This event resulted in high engagement. Also, their TikTok following increased by 25%. Well, it does affect their sales, and they received 7x more views than normal.

         Sources: Techcrunch

How To Create Shoppable Videos that Convert?

Source: Unsplash

The answer to your final question is here.  Here is the best way to create a shoppable video that converts.

• Step 1: Educate your audience for a powerful shoppable video. It’s best to connect early on with your audience and create an interactive environment. Grant them information about your video by including a poster frame and calling out all the features up-front. 

For example, brands like Made.com merges user-generated and shoppable content. This means they know how to create magical videos that help their audience see how furniture or homeware looks in real life before making any decision.

Source: Made.com

• Step 2:  Adding a shoppable within your first few shots is the key. If you can create a seamless buyer's journey for viewers by adding a click and purchase button without customers leaving your site, you’re on the right path.

Let’s take the example of the recent campaign for Promod's jeans. They included a clickable overlay marked with products using the product import feature. It also added a shoppable group pop-up and carousel for mobile optimization. Their engagement went over 55%, and CTR was over 10%.

                                                           Source: Google images

• Step 3: Always remember less is more.  Focus on a few items. You can focus on 2-3 things and try not to overload the audience with too many options.

Your shoppable video should be on landing pages. It will be the first and only point your audience will reach and interact with before going to their shopping cart. Include all the essentials like description, images, and price, to help your customers make a purchase decision. 

• Step 4: Storytelling is the route to your customer’s hearts. Use creativity to create an engaging shoppable video. 

Alibaba is a great example of broadcasting content like live streams or showcasing their new collection. Recently, they broadcasted their latest collection for Met Gala looks featuring various celebrities.

                                                      Source: Alizila

During this broadcast, people can actively participate by purchasing or saving items on their list. Shoppable videos can take real-time interactivity to the next level.

• Step 5: Keep your CTA clear and to the point. It is crucial to convey one single CTA  effectively to reduce ambiguity. 

The Valentino spring SPRING 21 DIARY COLLECTION introduced a bright, colorful video featuring all the clickable areas for consumers. But the highlight was their CTA. When clicked on a group carousel, it would show the option to visit product pages and 'add to shopping bag' CTA. 

                                                     Source: Smartzer 

What Metrics Should You Measure in a shoppable video?

As per marketingdive.com, 40% of marketers now use shoppable video ads to support the new storeless economy.

Now that you’ve created your shoppable video, it’s time to measure the fruits of your labour. Here are a few metrics you should keep in mind to measure the results of shoppable videos.

1. Engagement 

If you want to understand how many times your video has been watched and rewatched, your engagement rate can inform you with the percentage of your viewers. 

With this engagement data, you can start to measure the quality and value of your videos. 

2. Click-through Rate

Your CTR shows how valuable your video is at encouraging viewers to take action. It’s all about a clear CTA. People will not click on your CTA if they don't watch the full video of your products. This means it should be engaging enough to keep your engagement and click-through rate high. 

3. Exit Rate

The exit rate helps you to find out the exact point where a visitor loses interest. It is vital to track this metric to understand why your visitors spend more time on a page but lose interest after visiting a few. 

For instance, your customers may be adding products to the shopping cart but not completing the checkout process. This implies maybe your checkout process is missing a critical payment method or your customers are having trouble making payments without registering.

All of this can be improved if your shoppable video has captivating text, descriptive images, videos, and cross-selling functions.

4. Conversion Rate                                                

Conversion is the real king. If you gain more leads and conversions with your video marketing, it shows your shoppable video content is working.  There are various ways you can track your conversion rates.

It counts attributes like video count, conversion of the viewers, sometimes the number of users subscribed, and the number of people who might have filled different forms on your website.

According to the future of commerce, sites that support video can boost conversion rates by 80%. This leads to higher levels of engagement and conversion; the video also yields a high ROI. Also, these numbers can be manifested as a percentage of all viewers that convert.

If you want to stand out in the eCommerce world, personal branding should be your priority. 

And most importantly, video marketing should be an essential part of your branding strategy.

It not only gives you plenty of opportunities to communicate through your product or service.  But it also helps your customers to do the same. This saves customer's time, energy, and the decision to see whether your deal is worth it or not.

It’s time to stop waiting and start executing shoppable video strategies to improve your sales, conversions, and brand loyalty.

Our Start and Scale course provide you dozen of tips to find success in the e-commerce world by award-winning ecommerce expert Gretta van Riel.

Most importantly, you’ll get the formula Gretta used to launch one of her new brands to $1 million in sales on day one. Want to know how? Read about it here.