By Hannah Thomas
However you like to call it – video marketing, video commerce, video promotion – practically all online shops, and any serious e-commerce website have some kind of video content.
Running an e-commerce business requires a lot of dedication and hard work in order to make it successful. This also requires smart marketing solutions. Your video content doesn’t have to cost a fortune, but it does have to be done properly. Poor video can affect your business quite a lot, but a good one can prove to be extremely beneficial in multiple ways.
According to recent studies, videos now have more than 60 times bigger chance to generate a first-page ranking than traditional SEO techniques. Knowing that, let’s take a dive into this subject and try to go through some essentials of successful video practices in e-commerce web design.
Make short but connecting content
As with any type of marketing, it’s crucial to understand what motivates your shoppers. One of the greatest things about video is that enables an emotional connection. You want to promote yourself as a friendly and trustworthy business. Simply putting out marketing messages can make a negative effect on your visitors and shoppers
Also, you should know that online shoppers have a very short attention span. With this in mind, your videos should be short to better adjust to their needs. Most of the videos range from 15 seconds to 5 minutes, but anything longer than that is considered wasted effort. The optimal time for video length should be between 1 and 2.5 minutes, as this length has proven the best for conversion rates.
Optimize your video presentation
Placement, page layout and video presentation have a major impact on the overall effectiveness of your videos. Small things like putting videos above the fold, or replacing the product image with a video can increase consumption.
Based on the specific details and your own environment, you may need to test thumbnail options and player sizes. Callouts that encourage shoppers to watch the video have also proven to be immensely useful. Your goal should always be to make it as convenient for your shoppers to access and watch videos on your site as possible.
Take care of the SEO and distribution
Nowadays, everywhere you look, there is talk about SEO, but this is not just a trend. SEO and proper use of keywords can significantly boost your website traffic, and therefore expand your reach and make your online presence stronger.
Add keywords and phrases to the title and make sure your descriptions are done properly to achieve the best SEO results. Use XML tools when submitting the video, and make sure you’ve made a good sitemap for it.
When it comes to reaching a wider audience, you have to manage your video content distribution. Video syndication can be an effective way to popularize videos and/or products. Video syndication can be a great tool, but if you’re looking for generating search traffic to your site then this isn’t such a good solution.
Get video testimonials to build credibility
Video testimonials are proven to be more trustworthy by the vast majority of internet users. This is mainly because it is way harder to fake while being recorded than it is when the testimonial is done in a written form. There is also the engagement.
Using video testimonials makes you send out a strong message, and as Webdel web developers from Sydney have testified – with engaging video testimonials, conversion rates drastically increase. When incorporated with e-commerce, video testimonials can be an amazing traffic generating tool. Imagine the reactions and the feedback you would get when your shoppers get to witness how great you are from others like them. That alone can be a motivation, without the proven conversion rate increase.
Add text and integrate social and interactive elements
You simply cannot rely solely on the voice from your videos. There has to be something else. Don’t be afraid of the informational text or occasional subtitled part, but don’t go overboard with it, as it can make your video look quite cheap. With practically all social media having the “mute video auto play” system, adding text to the video can prove to be quite helpful.
Adding interactive elements such as overlays, links, polls, discount alerts, hotspots and various call to action buttons can affect the engagement in many ways. An engaged user has a much bigger chance of converting, and you can collect insights when users interact with videos. This can also help you understand what your visitors and shoppers like and watch the most.
Don’t forget about ratings, reviews, comments and similar social media engagement tools. Add links and shortcuts to your social media pages and add comments to your videos. Try to engage in social media as much as you can, because this is where your video content can have its maximum reach.
Measure ROI
It’s important to measure the value-add received from implementing video content. The most important thing to measure is conversion rate. Other useful things that you can measure are cart abandonment, overall site or page traffic and view-through rate. If the ROI isn’t effective, there is something you need to reconsider.
Sometimes your video simply isn’t good enough, but the collected data will help you understand the needs of your shoppers better. Not only that, but you will be able to really manage to elevate engagement, once you fully understand what are your customers asking from you.
Starting and running a successful e-commerce business is hard, there’s no doubt in that, but it’s not impossible. When it comes to making a successful website for such business, there are various things to take in consideration. One of those things is video content incorporation. As with any other content, you have to make sure you understand the needs of your customers, and you have to go through the collected data as thoroughly as possible. Only when you understand your shoppers can you understand how to engage them, and engaging them will make your conversion rates sky rocket. So, don’t wait around, go and start planning your new video content strategy.
Hannah Thomas is a freelance web developer based in Australia. Always eager to learn new things and to share the knowledge she acquired along the way. Besides coding, she love’s writing, movies and spending time outdoors.
