Adding clickable links to videos can transform your customers’ passive viewing experience into a highly engaging interactive encounter. Interactive content can increase user activity by 591% and purchase intent by 9X.
To add clickable links to your videos, you could use a mainstream video hosting platform like YouTube or opt for a more dedicated interactive video platform. Many businesses prefer dedicated interactive video software for their added benefits. Let’s see why.
Table of Contents
Why You Should Use an Interactive Video Platform Like COTU
Adding Clickable Links Manually
Adding Clickable Links via Product API
How to Add Clickable Links to Videos Using COTU
Why You Should Prefer an Interactive Video Platform Like COTU Over YouTube
Many marketers like to “cut corners” by using YouTube to make their video appear interactive. However, using a dedicated interactive video platform, like COTU, comes with many benefits. Unlike YouTube, this type of platform offers you more freedom and more diverse options. Let’s briefly explore these options.
More Clickable Link Options
Dedicated interactive video platforms allow more flexibility to use clickable links in your video by overlaying the video with product cards. You can add relevant information on the cards, followed by a call-to-action to take visitors to the associated web page directly from the video.
With COTU, you can add product cards anywhere in the video timeline and for any duration you prefer. You can also group similar product cards to improve the buying experience for your customers. Finally, you can add clickable links for all the featured products in a carousel at the end of the video.
According to Annie Hinners, an Interactive Video Expert, “[The end screen carousel] gives viewers a second opportunity to learn more about the product, engage with it, and, hopefully, purchase it.”
Better Branding
Branding options allow you to achieve consistent visual branding across different marketing platforms. According to a LucidPress survey, brand consistency increased revenue from 10% to more than 20% for 68% of the respondents.
Unlike YouTube, dedicated interactive software allows you to customize your clickable elements for consistent branding. For example, COTU allows you to add your company logo to videos and use brand colors for product cards. More branding options are in the works as well.
According to Richard Baugh, CEO at COTU, “As our product grows, users will eventually be able to customize their videos with unique configurations. For example, users will have the power to decide color schemes along with how indicators are displayed.”
Better Support
Nothing beats quality customer support. “I would say customer support is a big reason for why you should choose or consider any technology that you’re planning to use in your business,” says Hinners.
Interactive video software platforms, like COTU, offer personalized support to ensure that you’re getting the best possible results from their platform. The COTU support team strives to understand your requirements and assist you accordingly.
The best thing about COTU support is that they use critical customer feedback to improve their software, customer experience, and customer service. As a result, they can better provide you with the exact support that you require.
Robust Analytics
YouTube cannot provide in-depth analytics about your videos’ interactive elements. However, dedicated interactive software has powerful analytics features that collect data on various levels of engagement and click-throughs on specific products in the video, as well as standard analytics related to overall views, engagement, click-throughs, and campaign comparisons.
With the COTU dashboard, you can compare campaigns by running A/B tests. Comparative testing can help determine optimal link placements, the best CTAs, voiceovers, and more.
“COTU has a really robust analytics tool that allows the brand to take a good look at what viewers are engaging with, so they can invest into the products that people are liking. You can see common threads to see if viewers like one product more than another. Then, you can dive a little bit deeper into that product so that you’re giving the people who are watching the video, what they want,” Baugh explains.
With this in mind, let’s examine how different interactive software allows you to add clickable links to your videos. Later, we will show you the exact steps to add clickable links to your videos with COTU.
Different Ways to Add Clickable Links to Videos
Now that you’re aware of the benefits of using dedicated interactive video software, let’s explore two ways in which different interactive software allows users to add clickable links.
Adding Clickable Links Individually
Clickable links can be added individually by configuring one product at a time. This method is best suited for shorter videos with fewer products. Although it can become time-consuming to add clickable links to videos individually, it gives users more control and flexibility in defining the product fields.
Adding Clickable Links via Batch Upload
If the software you use enables a product API connection to your e-commerce platform, you can import product information into the video directly from your product catalog. It’s one of the simplest ways to add product information to interactive videos.
The most significant benefit of using an API is that product information is updated in real-time. COTU will soon have API options available for their customers.
According to Baugh, “COTU will have a Shopify integration so you can actually integrate your COTU account with Shopify. This feature will easily import any products that you have in Shopify over to COTU, so you can easily add them to your video.”
See COTU in Action
How to Add Clickable Links to Videos Using COTU
When adding clickable links using COTU’s video editing platform, it’s best to start with a video already approved by relevant stakeholders. This eliminates any complexity and ensures a simple and straightforward process of creating an interactive video with COTU.
Step 1: Create Your Campaign
Once you’ve produced your video and are happy with the results, it’s time to create your COTU campaign.
Here are the steps to create your campaign in COTU:
- From the COTU dashboard, create a new campaign.
- Give your campaign a name.
- Upload your video.
- Add your campaign goals, audience, and budget.
- Click the Create button.
Tip: For best results, when creating video content for interactive campaigns, hold the shots featuring products a few seconds longer than the rest of the video to allow ample time for the viewers to observe the product.
Step 2: Create Your Product Overlays
In this step, you’ll create expandable cards for your products. Viewers can learn more about a product by clicking on these cards. You can also add CTAs to these cards, which can lead the viewers to product pages, blogs, recipes, sign-up pages, webinars, etc., directly from the video.
Here are the steps to create product overlays:
- Select Products from the side menu and click Add to create a product overlay for your video.
- Fill out the product name, price, and description. Upload the product photo and add a URL to include a clickable link on the product card.
- Click on Create Product to add a product overlay successfully.
- Repeat the process for as many products as you wish to feature in your video.
Tip: Highlight the most prominent features of the products in the product descriptions to entice readers to click through to learn more about the products and purchase them.
Step 3: Add Products to the Timeline
Once you’re done creating all the product overlays and clickable links, you can start adding the products to the video timeline and configure a perfect experience for your customers.
Here are the steps to add the products to your video:
- Click and drag the products to place them on your preferred points on the video timeline.
- Play the video to see the products appear as overlays at their specified points on the video. Drag the product sliders along the timeline to adjust when product cards appear in the video.
- You can also use sliders to adjust the duration for which product overlays appear in the video.
Tip: Try to display your first product within the first 3-5 seconds to ensure people know it’s interactive and you can engage them right from the beginning.
Step 4: Save and Publish Your Campaign
When you’re satisfied with the customer experience offered by your interactive video, you’re ready to share it with the world. You can save it as a draft to get approval from all stakeholders. Then, it’s time to publish your campaign.
Here are the steps to publish your campaign:
- Save your campaign and click Publish.
- Your campaign is now live—awesome!
- Now you can share the video with your audience. COTU gives you three distribution options: a unique URL, an embed code, and a QR code.
Tip: Before publishing the video, you can get stakeholders’ approval through COTU’s preview link, which enables them to view and edit the video directly on the COTU platform.
How Interactive Video Can Supercharge Your Engagement
Interactive video is quickly gaining popularity among marketers, and for a good reason, too. Up to 41% of viewers add products to their shopping carts after watching an interactive video.
Marketers using interactive videos in their video marketing strategies have seen outstanding results over the years. Besides better branding options and quick support, interactive video software platforms like COTU offer far more clickable link options and flexibility in their application.
Placing clickable links strategically throughout your video can increase the likelihood of viewers engaging with them and, consequently, increasing the time they spend with your content. They can expand the clickable cards to learn more about your offers. If they like them enough, they can click on the CTAs to reach the product pages, or landing pages, directly from the video.
As viewers spend more time on your content, the probability of getting click-throughs and conversions will increase. This is because interactive videos are known to produce 25% better conversion rates than regular videos.
Hinners explains, “[Shoppable videos] increase conversion rates significantly, because you’re giving the viewers more opportunity to engage with the product.”
With COTU, you can group products together, for example, to help your customers buy a complete set or outfit.
End screen carousels are like the icing on the cake. They give viewers another chance to click on their favorite products while their desire to purchase is still strong.
In conclusion, COTU makes it super simple to add clickable links to your videos. You can contact our team of interactive video experts to learn more about COTU’s features and how they can help you make your videos interactive and engaging for your customers.